C3 ARABLES FOR 
OUR TIMES 




CALEINS 




Class "B-T^i 



7 



Book. 



A 



Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



016! ?! NVf 



PARABLES 

FOR OUR TIMES 

A Study of Present-Day Questions 
in the Light of 
Christ's Illustrations. 

By Wolcott Calkins, D.D. 



SECOND EDITION REVISED 



lOBtOtt 

THE PILGRIM PRESS 

NEW YORK - CHICAGO 



B F3-75" 



Copyright, iqio 
By WOLCOTT CALKINS 



^.4253895 



Contents. 



CHAP. PAGB 

I. — The General Application to Our 

Times; the Parables Classified i 

II. — A Divine Valuation of Human Na- 
ture; Parables of the Pearl of 
Great Price. (Matt. xiii. 44-46). 14 

III. — The Divine Endowment of Human 
Nature; Parable of the Talents 
(Matt. xxv. 14-30) 28 

IV. — Financial Repentance; Parables of 
the Unjust Steward (Luke xvi. 
1-12) 44 

V. — The Labour Question, the Other 
Side ; Parable of the Good Samar- 
itan, I. (Luke x. 25-32) 60 

VI. — The Labour Question, the Right 
Side; Parable of the Good Samar- 
itan, II. (Luke x. 33-37) 76 

VII. — The Problem of Christian Optimism, 
the Difficulty; Parable of the 
Tares, I. (Matt. xiii. 24-30) 95 

VIII. — The Problem of Christian Optimism, 
the Solution; Parable of the 
Tares, II. (Matt. xiii. 36-43).... 109 



BT375* 

X* 



PARABLES FOR OUR TIMES. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE GENERAL APPLICATION OF ALL THE 
PARABLES OF CHRIST TO OUR TIMES; 
THE PARABLES CLASSIFIED. 

And so the Word had breath, and wrought 

With human hands the creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds. 

Tennyson. 

Three clusters of parables are as radiant 
among the heavenly words of our Lord as 
the signs of the Zodiac in the firmament 
above. After the Sermon on the Mount 
He continued to teach in the same way, 
with few illustrations, until the autumn 
of His first year in Galilee. Then He be- 
gan to use parables more freely. Only a 
few of them are recorded, for at this time 
He never taught the people at all without 
a parable. It is evident that He told 
stories by the hour without pausing to 
explain them. This excited w r onder, and 
His disciples asked why He had made such 
a change in His method of teaching. His 
explanation brings out the fact that the 
change was in the minds of the people 
who were listening to Him. Immense 



2 GENERAL APPLICATION* 

multitudes had followed Him, and no 
opposition had been made of a serious 
nature. Suddenly, the Pharisees began 
to be jealous, the enthusiasm of the crowds 
was subsiding, and the test must be ap- 
plied to which He subjects all His followers 
in every age. The Gospel which all were 
so ready to accept proves to be a sifting 
of character and a call to self-denial: You 
have all heard My word, but some have 
not understood it at all ; some will stumble 
as soon as tribulation and persecution 
arise; in some it will be choked by the 
cares of this lifetime and the deceitfulness 
of riches. It will bear fruit only in those 
who receive it in good and honest hearts. 
These parables may have been given on 
different occasions, but they are grouped 
together here to illustrate in general the 
fundamental truths of the Gospel : the 
fruitfulness of its teaching, The Sower; 
the value of human nature, The Treasure 
and The Pearl; and finally, the judgment 
at frequent intervals to protect the truth 
from adulteration, The Tares and The 
Net. In this threefold classification of 
the first group, The Leaven has been 
ranged with The Sower in the traditional 
interpretation. If this be correct it is the 
only instance in the New Testament in 
which the word leaven is. used in. a good 
sense.- Probably it means exactly the 



PARABLES CLASSIFIED. 3 

same as the tares, a principle of evil which 
works in secret. The fire of the oven 
must arrest its fermentation. So the 
Leaven ought to take its place between 
the Tares and the Net as a parable of the 
judgment. 

The second cluster of parables in chro- 
nological order appears in the record of 
the last six months of the Lord's teaching. 
He had just returned from the winter 
festival in Jerusalem, where He was re- 
jected and threatened with stoning. The 
people of Galilee were alarmed by this 
official repudiation of His claim to be the 
Messiah, and they were also forsaking Him. 
He was driven from His home, and it was 
only for these few months of flight from 
persecution that He had not where to lay 
His head. Then the publicans and sin- 
ners began to come to Him. He had 
come to them before. He had made one 
of the chief publicans an apostle, who had 
spread a great feast and had invited His 
associates in the revenue department to 
meet his Master. But they were shy of 
Him; His followers were the people who 
despised and hated them for their extor- 
tions and for their sycophancy to the 
Roman power. And the sinners were the 
outcasts of all classes. Even Jesus, who 
had been healing and blessing the poor 



4 GENERAL APPLICATION, 

for years, had been habitually in company 
too respectable for publicans and sinners. 
This was their chance; all the world had 
left Him to them. With a sudden flame 
of hope and relief they began to flock to 
Him from every place. For the first time, 
and henceforth to the last week of His 
sufferings, the multitudes who were hang- 
ing on His words were tax-gatherers and 
profligates. 

And now there was nothing in the Gos- 
pel of the Blessed God too good for them. 
The Lost Sheep, The Lost Coin and 
the Lost Son; The Good Samaritan; 
The Debtor Forgiven Most; The Wid- 
ow and Her Judge; The Pharisee and 
the Publican; these were some of the 
visible stars of this cluster. And the rest, 
which were not reported, were also, no 
doubt, stories of the endless love of God 
to sinful men. If a note of severity was 
heard, it was addressed to a surly brother, 
or to priests and Levites who passed by 
on the other side, or to the rulers who 
neglected or to the Pharisees who despised 
the penitent. Jesus loved them, and His 
winning parables to them are the gems of 
His gospel, which have ever since been 
rescuing lost and despairing men. 

It is possible that The Treasure and 
The Pearl were also spoken on this oc- 
casion, and that they were left out of the 



PARABLES CLASSIFIED. 5 

third gospel because its writer had seen 
the original sources of the first gospel. 
But these two parables are needed where 
they are, to complete the outline of all the 
essential truths of the Gospel. The truth 
they illustrate is the centre and circum- 
ference of all the parables of the second 
cluster. 

Publicans and sinners follow Jesus on 
his final journey to Jerusalem. But His 
last parables are not for them. Something 
more is to be said to the Pharisees and to 
the apostate nation. He stands for the 
last time in their temple, takes up the 
parables of judgment in the first group and 
enlarges them in a series of awful severity, 
and yet He begins in a way which is full 
of yearning love for them: Two Sons, one 
says, I go, but never stirs a step; the other 
says, I will not, and then repents, and goes 
to work in his father's vineyard. Jesus 
will not accept the refusal His people had 
given Him six months before. That must 
not be their last word. It is not too late. 
They may yet be husbandmen in the vine- 
yard. But the next parable is The Wick- 
ed Husbandmen. Will they dare, after 
that, to kill the Son of God? Then, The 
Marriage of the King's Son. Will they 
be thrust into outer darkness, or else ap- 
pear in the hypocrisy of their own religion, 



6 GENERAL APPLICATION. 

and leave the wedding garments to pub- 
licans and to harlots? Then, The Five 
Talents: their patriarchs and prophets 
were talented men, and had transmitted 
their own inspiration to the whole nation. 
What has it done with its Lord's money? 

These are the last solemn words of the 
Messiah to His appointed people. The 
three parables of judgment in the first 
group are fully expanded. His instruc- 
tions to the apostles at the last supper are 
illustrated with many beautiful emblems, 
but The Vine and its Branches is an 
allegory, not a parable. 

Many parables have been omitted in this 
enumeration, which is intended only to 
indicate the three prominent groups spoken 
in rapid succession at critical periods of 
Christ's ministry. The Sermon on the 
Mount is the written constitution of His 
kingdom. The parables of the first group 
illustrate the first principles of the Gospel, 
and they are equally applicable to all men. 
The welcome to sinful and disheartened 
man demands another series of extended 
illustrations. Last of all, the guilt and 
danger of rejecting the great salvation, 
which is offered freely to all, must be plain- 
ly declared in the parables of judgment. 

The chronological arrangement is not 
followed at all in this volume. The most 



PARABLES CLASSIFIED. 7 

important problems of our own times are 
the only objects in view, and the parables 
selected are ranged with reference to the 
order in which these modern questions 
can be studied best in the light of Christ's 
illustrations. They are all pictures of His 
kingdom with an eternal perspective. 
They would not be true if motive and hope 
were vanishing on a nearer horizon. The 
Sadducees had lost the far, and the Phar- 
isees the near, horizon. The religion and 
morality of both were hideous caricatures. 
The Sermon on the Mount fixes the true 
vanishing point, and makes all delinea- 
tions of righteous men and institutions 
converge where one is looking not on things 
seen, but on things not seen and eternal 
in the heavens. First of all, Christ de- 
scribes individual men who belong to His 
kingdom. They are poor in spirit, desti- 
tute of all virtue and good inspirations, 
but they are welcome because they are 
conscious of their destitution. After, and 
not before, they enter into the kingdom, 
they mourn for their sins and are com- 
forted. This submission to God, and this 
humility in the sight of men, is the meek- 
ness which inherits spiritual power on 
earth. And then, not first, nor second, 
nor third, but fourth, and in the very 
centre of their growing experience, they 
feel the hunger and thirst which nothing 



8 GENERAL APPLICATION. 

but the righteousness of God can satisfy. 
Then they take notice of the sufferings of 
their fellow-men, and obtain mercy for 
themselves and others. They are growing 
in purity of heart until they can endure 
as seeing Him who is invisible, and are 
called children of God because they are 
all peacemakers among men. And a few 
of them are sure to become heroes at last 
who can suffer and die for righteousness' 
sake. Yet, after all, the most exalted 
blessedness of the greatest souls on earth 
is precisely the same which was promised 
while they were destitute of all spiritual 
qualities; theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
These Beatitudes are just as complete 
as the Ten Commandments. They ex- 
haust all qualifications for citizenship in 
the kingdom and trace the exact order of 
its endowments and responsibilities. The 
most casual reading of this preamble to its 
constitution forbids all attempts to iden- 
tify it with any institution which has ever 
appeared among men. Churches belong 
to the kingdom, but the kingdom is not 
the Church. The word occurs only twice 
in all of Christ's recorded teachings— Thou 
art a man of rock, and on this rock I will 
build My Church; one man and ten more 
who instantly joined him in his great con- 
fession: this was the first Church of Christ. 
How large may a true Church become? 



PARABLES CLASSIFIED. Q 

Two or three hundred, perhaps two or 
three thousand; but two or three hundred 
thousand would be too many, for they 
must meet together in one place and be 
agreed as touching anything they ask in 
His name. And one of the most import- 
ant things to obtain by prayer is the wis- 
dom to restore an erring brother. This 
delicate work of charity can best be done 
by two or three persons. The word 
* church' may have another meaning in a 
few passages of the epistles, and there may 
be no objection to apply this designation 
to institutions which have become neces- 
sary and useful in the progress of Chris- 
tianity. But our Lord certainly describes 
the Church as a spiritual centre, in every 
locality, of all the forces of His kingdom. 
The Church must have no conflicts, and 
must be kept clear of offences, and there- 
fore it must not include too many. 

But the kingdom of God includes as 
many as possible. Offences must needs 
come, and the kingdom ought not to evade 
the inevitable conflicts of righteousness 
with wickedness. It is not a kingdom of 
this world, because it enlists neither wealth 
nor military power nor political authority 
to sustain its sovereignty. But it does 
assert, and it always maintains, a spiritual 
supremacy over them all; therefore it wel- 
comes and compels all sorts and conditions 



IO GENERAL APPLICATION. 

of men to accept its privileges and respon- 
sibilities. None are good enough to come. 
None are too bad to come. The kingdom 
of heaven in all ages and in every land 
consists of all men who are working to- 
gether or who can be combined for right- 
eousness. A welcome as wide as God's 
mercy is offered to this magnificent re- 
public of God. 

These parables of the kingdom are vivid 
illustrations of open and hopeful ques- 
tions of our times. We remember, with 
a shudder, recent times when men had to 
set themselves against the churches in 
order to be uncompromising antagonists 
of the greatest crime in the land. They 
will never need to join our churches to be 
uncompromising supporters of righteous- 
ness. He that is joined to the Lord is one 
spirit. We are discarding the prejudice 
which would forbid those who follow not 
after us to cast out devils. Everybody 
who is not against Christ is on our side. 
One man who is right is a majority, if a 
million are against him in the wrong. Our 
homes, our churches, our civil governments, 
our clubs, and men working one by one, 
are all within the kingdom of heaven, only 
so far, and just so far, as they are doing 
the will of our Father who is in heaven, 



PARABLES CLASSIFIED. II 

The most revolutionary teaching of the 
Gospel is to be found in the parables of 
the Divine judgment. The same eternal 
perspective is retained in them all. There 
will be a final coming of Christ to judge 
the quick and the dead. But two sayings 
of His forbid, in terms, the traditional 
interpretation which restricts the judg- 
ments of these parables to the last coming 
of Christ. There are some standing here 
who shall not taste of death till they see 
the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. 
This generation shall not pass till all these 
things — the Son of Man coming in the 
clouds of heaven with power and great 
glory, the tribes of the earth mourning, 
the angels sounding the trumpet and gath- 
ering the elect from the four winds, and 
from one end of heaven to the other — till 
all these things shall be fulfilled. 

These explicit words have not passed 
away, but there was never a time when 
they needed more to be rescued from ob- 
scurity. They describe Divine judgments 
during the lifetime of men, in unprece- 
dented and awful dispensations of provi- 
dence. They all point to the last judg- 
ment and to its irreversible decisions. 
But only one parable expressly speaks of 
death and of the great gulf which is fixed 
and impassable. The casting into outer 
darkness, the wailing and gnashing of teeth 



12 GENERAL APPLICATION. 

cannot possibly refer exclusively to retri- 
butions beyond the grave. For these are 
almost the very words which were repeated 
on the Day of Pentecost, and saved thou- 
sands who had not been pricked to the 
heart when they fell from the lips of the 
Messiah they had crucified. These awful 
words are the most realistic descriptions 
in literature of the remorse for sin which 
leads to repentance, and not to despair. 

Thus the true warrant for Christian 
optimism is furnished by these parables of 
judgment. The sentimentalism, which 
finds the whole Gospel in the central cluster, 
cannot abide the brightness of His coming. 
Within the memory of some of us there 
was a day of judgment which restored, 
not only the severest of Christ's woes upon 
the wicked, but also the imprecatory 
Psalms, to a place in Christian teaching, 
which was neither vindictive nor hopeless. 
The fatal doubt, lest the wicked prolong 
their lives in wickedness, and lest sentence 
against their evil works be never executed, 
would make the best of men apostates and 
deserters. There was a good man once 
who watched the prosperity of the wicked 
until his feet were almost gone; then he 
went into the sanctuary of God and under- 
stood their end. Another pessimist frank- 
ly confesses that he went about to cause 
his heart to despair because of the oppres- 



PARABLES CLASSIFIED. 13 

sion of the poor and the violent perverting 
justice, until he hated his own life and all 
his labour. At last he reaches this horrible 
conclusion: Whatsoever thy hand findeth 
to do, do it by brutal force, because there 
is no retribution for thy stratagems, nor 
for thy cunning, nor for thy prudence, in 
the grave where thou goest. And yet this 
was by no means the conclusion of the 
whole matter. In better moments he ex- 
claimed, I know that it shall be well with 
them that fear God, and that it shall not 
be well with the wicked. 

The judgments of this life are the most 
merciful dispensations of Providence. The 
last and severest words of the parables of 
judgment are flaming with the love of God 
for sinful men, and radiant with hope for 
a suffering world. 



CHAPTER II. 

A DIVINE VALUATION OF HUMAN NATURE; 
THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

The power to set the heart right, to renew the springs of 
action, comes from Christ. The sense of the infinite worth 
of the single soul, and the recoverableness of a man at his 
worst are the gifts of Christ. — Drummond. 

Have you understood all of these things? 
They answered: Yea, Lord. That is what 
we have all been answering ever since. 
It is easy to understand such simple par- 
ables as these — the treasure hid in a field 
is a good character. We must deny our- 
selves the honours and pleasures of the 
world to purchase the whole field of cap- 
acities and opportunities where this treas- 
ure may be developed. The pearl of great 
price is virtue, which we must obtain at 
the cost of everything we possess. 

Nay, have we understood all of these 
things? Our own sacrifices to obtain vir- 
tue — are we sure that this is the kingdom 
of heaven? It is the kingdom of Pytha- 
goras, of Seneca and of Kant. The whole 
stress of natural ethics is laid on our own 
strivings after virtue. It is the kingdom 

14 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 15 

of Saul of Tarsus. Is it the kingdom of 
the man who counts his own righteousness 
as a dead loss? The ethics of Christ is a 
gospel. Are these the glad tidings to be- 
wildered men, that their salvation is some- 
thing hidden, and jealously covered up in 
a field alienated from their possession? 
Must they search the world around and 
sound the depths of the sea? And what 
do they possess for the purchase of the 
treasure after it has been discovered? A 
voluntary sacrifice of ambitions and in- 
dulgences which are worse than useless in 
themselves, a sore life of penances, and 
good works enough to merit salvation! 
This would be exactly what Paul means 
by falling from grace. 

Such an interpretation would never have 
been devised if the parables of the hid 
treasure and of the pearl had been grouped 
with the story of the Good Shepherd leav- 
ing the ninety and nine, and going into the 
mountains to seek the one sheep which had 
gone astray. But why are they out of 
place where they stand? In all the par- 
ables of this cluster the Son of Man is com- 
ing to save that which is lost. The king- 
dom of heaven in two parables which 
Christ interprets is like sowing a field, and 
the Son of Man is the sower. Again, it 
is like dragging the sea with a net. Of 
course the fisher who casts the great Gos- 



l6 VALUE OF HUMAN NATURE. 

pel net is also the Son of Man. Why- 
should we take the two short parables be- 
tween the Sower and the Net out of this 
Divine combination, and put ourselves in 
the place of the Divine searcher for the hid 
treasure and the pearl of great price? 

The field is the world; the field where 
wheat and tares are growing, and also the 
field where the treasure is hid. The sea is 
the world; the sea where the net is draw- 
ing to the shore both good and bad, and 
also the sea where many shells of little 
value are found, and one pearl of great 
price. And this is precisely the kingdom 
of heaven: the Redeemer of the world 
sowing His great harvest field and search- 
ing the depths of the sea. He finds one 
treasure which is worth the cost to re- 
deem the whole earth. He forsakes the 
joys of heaven, to purchase one pearl of 
great price. His pearl is the lost soul of 
man. 

This illustration will not seem extrava- 
gant if we think of the great souls who have 
flashed their light over dark ages of the 
past. Egypt was purchased and preserved 
because it was the hiding-place for a race 
that would produce Moses. Out of the 
encrusted bigotry of the Pharisees was 
rescued the glorious mind of Paul. The 
church which had become a synagogue of 
Satan was covered from destruction while 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 17 

it was the only possible field for Savona- 
rola's prophecies. And only a few of 
these rarest gems have become radiant 
on earth. There were seven thousand once 
of whom the greatest prophet of his time 
never got a glimpse. An exceeding great 
multitude that no man can number of all 
nations and kingdoms and tongues shall 
at last come out of the great tribulation. 
Their lives are hid now with Christ in God. 
Then they shall shine forth as the sun in 
the kingdom above. The wealth of heaven 
is the communion of saints found on earth 
and kept hid from its evil in the purchased 
field. 

Shall we say, then, that the pearl of great 
price means all good men, and stop there? 
But how came they to be good? Is this 
the Divine valuation of human nature in 
its most perfect development? Where 
was the pearl found, and what was it worth 
at first? . 

A few years ago a little child was sleep- 
ing peacefully in a room near to a saloon 
which was full of drunken men. There 
was a quarrel. A woman interfered. The 
child was roused by an awful scream, and 
opened the door to see her father beat her 
mother to death. She was found in the 
morning sitting in sleepless horror by the 
lifeless form. This child was Christ's 



l8 VALUE OF HUMAN NATURE. 

pearl of great price. Nobody doubts it 
now that she has become a noble woman, 
giving her services for the reform of in- 
ebriates. She was Christ's pearl of great 
price then. And so was the murderer him- 
self. His repentance under just punish- 
ment might not fully verify this to our 
belief, but one such malefactor was with 
the Lord in paradise on the very day of 
his repentance in the agonies of death. 
What depths of iniquity has Christ ex- 
plored to find His pearl of great price! 

Where did He find you and me? By 
the fireside in our peaceful homes, in halls 
of learning and surrounded by all the re- 
finements of modern society? But He is 
not seeking for the casket, nor for the shell. 
His treasure is the heart itself. Have the 
environments of civilization saved con- 
science from lethargy, and nerved the will 
for duty? The most disheartening search 
is not in benighted regions, nor in chasms 
opened by crime, but where culture itself 
is making men cynical. The hiding-places 
in the East used to be levelled and planted 
with fragrant flowers and delicious fruits. 
The plunderer of our souls takes pains to 
cultivate a showy growth of amiable im- 
pulses and graceful accomplishments, that 
the heart may be concealed the more se- 
curely. This is the one object of the Re- 
deemer's search. The central truth of the 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 19 

parable is lost if we make the least restric- 
tion in its application to the whole human 
race. Fear God and keep His command- 
ments, for this is The Whole of Man. 
Not merely the whole duty, but the whole 
nature of man. Man is distinguished from 
creatures below him by this one capacity 
to recognize his obligation to his Creator. 
It is their nature to fear him, it is his na- 
ture to fear God. And this parable de- 
scribes the search, not for good men, but 
for human nature in its moral quality and 
in its spiritual capacity. 

What is the Divine valuation of human 
nature? The first indication of it is the 
purchase of the whole field. This cannot 
be an insignificant feature of our parables. 
In short illustrations like these there are no 
embellishments. The field is the world, 
and it was alienated from God when for us 
men and for our salvation His Son came 
down from heaven. The whole creation 
was groaning and travailing in pain, re- 
volting from the shock which was thwart- 
ing its destiny. But now that our Redeem- 
er has found where His treasure is hid, 
all nature rises to a posture of eager ex- 
pectation, animated by the hope that every 
created thing shall be delivered from the 
bondage of corruption into the glorious 
liberty of God's own children. Paul's 



20 VALUE OF HUMAN NATURE. 

wonderful hymn of Nature's Gospel has 
its prelude in these two parables. To 
make the earth a safe home for man, 
Christ has set all nature throbbing and 
thrilling with the instinctive hope of a full 
restitution in a new heaven and a new 
earth where righteousness shall reign for 
ever. 

Another indication of its value is our 
Lord's painful search for the lost soul in a 
hostile world. Hiding treasures in a field 
was a common practice in the Orient, 
where property lacked the security of a 
government fostering industry, of banks 
and of solid investments. Values too 
bulky to be carried on the person were 
often buried. No friend could be trusted 
with the secret. If the owner never re- 
turned the treasure would be lost, unless 
some peasant should become suddenly 
rich by stumbling upon it. To this day 
our explorers cannot convince the people 
of the land where this story was told that 
they are not digging for treasures hid in a 
field. Marvellous reports are well authen- 
ticated of immense wealth unearthed on 
ground untrodden for centuries. The Di- 
vine explorer was just discovering His 
treasure by His own wrestlings with the 
temptations inseparable from our nature, 
when He was met by the challenge of the 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 2 1 

plunderer: All the kingdoms of this world 
are delivered unto me and to whomsoever 
I will I give them. But this appeal to 
human ambition failed. One who knew 
its fatal danger was searching for a treasure 
which the devil could no longer conceal. 
Oriental literature abounds in legends of 
magicians who could detect by secret art 
the spot where the search for buried wealth 
would be rewarded. The myths were 
prophecies. No superstitions are benight- 
ed enough; no adornments are bright 
enough to cover the treasure from the 
Omniscient eye. Divine yearning and un- 
wearied love search for that which is lost 
until it is found. 

And there is always a response to the 
Divine search in human nature. A moth- 
er's groping in a forest for a lost child is 
guided at least by the cry of alarm from a 
distance. How did Jesus find the profli- 
gate woman" of Samaria and Zacchaeus 
the extortioner and Peter after his cursing 
and swearing? They were unconsciously 
answering His calls. And you also may 
be bewildered by the tragedies of life, you 
may have lost capacity for the implicit 
faith of childhood, you may find no stead- 
fast convictions to take its place, and you 
may be giving yourself up for lost. Now 
He has found you. You are exactly where 
His human sympathies reach you. You 



22 VALUE OF HUMAN NATURE. 

have in your heart this instant a response 
to the search which has always been at 
once so manly and so motherly. Christ 
has opened all the doors into the unknown, 
and sounded all the depths where earnest 
thought ever plunges, and this painful 
search is the measure of the valuation which 
He sets upon your spiritual nature. 

The cost of redemption is the truest 
mark of the value of human nature. Jesus 
Christ was the only spiritual expert who 
knew exactly what is in man. He could 
read thoughts and hopes and capacities as 
we read books. How much did He give 
for His pearl of great price ? Twice in these 
parables the words linger on the lips that 
were yet to drain the cup in Gethsemane: 
for the joy thereof He went and sold all 
that He had. He emptied Himself, and 
sank down from the glory He had with His 
Father before all worlds, to our low estate. 
He was rich, and for our sakes He became 
poor. The pearl-diver seizes a heavy stone 
to hasten his descent to the bottom. And 
when our Lord was on the search for His 
pearl of great price He took not the nature 
of angels. That would have kept Him 
from sinking down to find our guilty souls. 
And even human nature in its innocency 
would have been too buoyant. He knew 
no sin, but God sent forth His Son in the 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 23 

likeness of sinful flesh. He consented to 
veil his Omniscience, and become a speech- 
less child, to grow out of ignorance, to be 
partaker of all our infirmities, and in e very- 
experience of life to become our own broth- 
er. He found us not where we are at our 
best, but where we were at our worst. 

"What did He give for His pearl of great 
price? When the pearl-diver sinks, the 
waters close over him. You have some- 
times held your breath when a friend was 
too long under water, but you never en- 
dured that suspense more than thirty 
seconds. Trained divers cannot live under 
water without modern apparatus for respi- 
ration more than two minutes. What 
must have been the despair of angels and 
men when the Searcher for lost souls was 
in the grasp of death three days and three 
nights. It was there He purchased His 
pearl of great price. Many goodly pearls 
He had found before. There were ninety 
and nine just persons who needed no re- 
pentance. For the one that was lost He 
sacrificed His life. 

Human nature has an intrinsic value 
w r orth this immeasurable cost. Man was 
made in the image of God. He stands 
enthroned in reason, freedom, and personal 
responsibility. A body of surpassing 
beauty, walks erect, supple and strong, 



24 VALUE OF HUMAN NATURE. 

speaking in expressive glances out of the 
windows of a soul which awes all subordi- 
nate creatures, giving voice in music and 
eloquence to the varying emotions within, 
animated by an immortal spirit, and des- 
tined to be changed into a glorious form, 
which shall be the organ of its heavenly 
life. The treasure found in the field was 
not removed, but the field was purchased 
for its use, and the redeemed earth is still 
the field for the exercise of the ransomed 
nature of man. In this life it is a kingdom 
of heaven to put forth all our powers of 
body and mind in the service of our Re- 
deemer. And in the life beyond the grave 
this earth may still be the home of God's 
children; He will be mindful of His own 
hid treasure. I know that my Redeemer 
liveth, and over my dust He will stand 
triumphant, and apart from my flesh I 
shall see God. Human nature ransomed 
by the blood of Christ and re-invigorated 
by His indwelling Spirit is the heir of 
mansions which may be preparing on a 
new earth where righteousness shall reign 
for ever. 

But above its intrinsic worth, human 
nature has acquired an enhanced value, 
in the Divine estimation, by the disasters 
it has suffered. The Creator of all things 
visible and invisible may have selected 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 25 

the pearl as the emblem of this value, be- 
cause no other gem could supply the illus- 
tration. Scientific tests have proved that 
the formation of pearls of the purest lustre 
is caused by some injury which the shell 
receives. By a fall or a blow a small bead 
of the mother-of-pearl is detached, around 
which concentric layers of wavy calcified 
membrane gradually form until they are 
solidified, and glow at last with surpassing 
radiance. 

God is love. God esteems nothing in 
the universe so dear to Him as the love of 
His creatures. And when He looked 
down into this dark world and saw human 
nature bruised by its fall, He saw in this 
very disaster the capacity for a new and 
a more tender love than He had ever re- 
ceived. They who never needed repent- 
ance could not give Him the gratitude of 
broken and contrite hearts. The one that 
was lost could love Him with a new affec- 
tion growing out of the very shock of the 
great transgression. What else does Christ 
mean by sending the question down the 
ages, Which of them will love Him most? 
and by setting His seal to the answer, The 
one that was forgiven most? 

No wonder we have been reading these 
parables falsely. The breadth and length, 
the depth and height of the love of God 
has surpassed our knowledge. We sup- 



26 VALUE OF HUMAN NATURE. 

posed there was nothing worth seeking in 
us, and the pearl of great price must be 
the grace which we are to seek in God. 
But here is something in us dearer to God 
than all heaven without us. The Son of 
God sold all that He had, and joyfully- 
paid the price of His anguish on the cross 
to purchase what the heaven of heavens 
would never contain until He brought it 
up from the depths of our degradation — 
the gratitude and the devotion of the for- 
given, broken and contrite heart of man, 
the new and lustrous gem in the Redeem- 
er's crown. 



Our studies of present-day questions 
must begin with these illustrations of the 
love of God to men and of their response 
to His calls of mercy. A philosophic basis 
for altruism might be found in the moral 
order of nature. Not only ethical, but 
economic, investigations might lead to the 
same conclusions. But the mind that was 
in Christ Jesus affords a Divine sanction 
for the highest value which can be esti- 
mated for human nature. And the par- 
able of the pearl, if our interpretation be 
true, furnishes the most beautiful illus- 
tration of the one capacity of our nature 
at its worst which has the greatest value 
in the sight of God. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 27 

Here beginneth our study of the wrongs 
which men are suffering. The call for re- 
pentance will never reach corporations and 
parliaments until the hearts of men are 
broken and contrite. The best thing in 
human nature, according to the Divine 
valuation, is also the most effective power 
in all social reforms. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE DIVINE ENDOWMENT OF HUMAN NA- 
TURE; THE TALENTS. 

"O Lord God, the inspirer and enlightener of all the 
prophets, speak to me also, lest being only outwardly warned 
but not inwardly quickened, I die and be found unfruitful. 
O speak to the comfort of my soul, to the renovation of my 
heavenly nature." — Thomas a Kempis. 

This parable first gave the word talent 
to all Christian languages, and yet the 
word has perpetuated a false interpreta- 
tion of the parable. Quickness of learn- 
ing, shrewdness in affairs, fluency of speech, 
dexterity in work, and all sorts of natural 
capacities have been crowded together 
under the popular designation of talents. 
Such indefiniteness is precluded by the 
parable itself, and by the place it holds 
in the connected teachings of our Lord. 

The proprietor of an immense estate has 
purchased hundreds of slaves and has won 
their affection by kindness. He has lived 
among them long enough to train them in 
his business and to reward them for faith- 
fulness. But now he is about to travel 
into a far country. From the parallel 
parable of the Ten Pounds we learn that 
28 



THE TALENTS. 29 

he is actually the heir to the kingdom of 
which this estate is a small part, that he 
is going now to be crowned, that he will 
return as monarch, and that he leaves these 
trusted slaves among hostile citizens who 
will rise in rebellion as soon as his back is 
turned. He calls them all together and 
distributes his goods, assigning routine 
and subordinate duties to most of them. 
But there are a few of them, three in one 
parable and ten in the other, with capaci- 
ties and training for more responsible 
service. To them he confides his talents. 
The talent was not a coin, but a measure 
by weight, and had the intrinsic value in 
gold of about twenty-five thousand dollars. 
At that time, wiien one of the smallest 
coins in circulation was fair pay for a day's 
work, the purchasing power of a talent 
was beyond computation. Our best trans- 
lation would be: to one servant he gave 
five millions, to another three and to an- 
other one million. These enormous trusts 
can mean but one thing: he divided his 
investments into graded departments, and 
made these picked men, according to their 
several abilities, responsible for the man- 
agement and profits of his entire property. 
When he came back they alone were sum- 
moned to give account of their steward- 
ship. There are other parables for mere 
labourers in the vineyard, who have only 



30 ENDOWMENT OF HUMAN NATURE. 

their Lord's goods to account for. The 
question for these three controllers of the 
whole estate is : What have you done with 
your Lord's talents? 

This parable was spoken to men who 
could not possibly empty the great word 
of its startling precision. It follows the 
woes pronounced on Scribes and Pharisees 
and the admonitions to watch for the com- 
ing of the King to judgment, and it intro- 
duces the solemn description of the coming 
of the Son of Man. The men were not 
there who were the most talented in the 
popular sense of the word. For ages 
wealth and science had been given to 
Egypt, the commerce of the seas to the 
Phoenicians, genius in philosophy, litera- 
ture, and the arts to the Greeks, and at 
last world-wide dominion to the Romans. 
These were the goods which had been com- 
mitted to the other servants, and in spite 
of age-long abuse, Divine blessings had 
followed these successive civilizations. 

But the men who had listened to these 
last appeals in their Temple, and who were 
now surrounding Jesus, had received some- 
thing else as much more valuable than all 
these goods combined as a million is greater 
than a unit. To this one rude nation with- 
out expanding territory, and without 
military power for conquest, God 4 had 
entrusted His revealed Law, a worship 



THE TALENTS* 3 1 

purely spiritual, prophetic inspiration, and 
His written oracles. They had a passion 
for faith and for family purity. Their 
language was incapable of double mean- 
ings and of philosophical distinctions, but 
rich beyond comparison in descriptions of 
Divine attributes and of human virtues. 
To this people of the Covenant He had 
finally sent His only begotten Son as their 
Messiah and the world's Redeemer. This 
is the predicted hour. The Angel of the 
Covenant has come suddenly to their 
Temple to reckon with them. What have 
they done with the Lord's talents? The 
other servants will be called to account 
for wasting the ordinary gifts of Providence. 
But Divine inspirations were given to the 
Jews in order to make them His spiritual 
commissioners for the whole world. Their 
Temple was intended to be a house of 
prayer for all nations. Their isolation was 
for their protection from the vices, not for 
indifference to the miseries, of others. 
They ought to have kept their talents in 
circulation for the winning of surrounding 
races from idolatry and from sensuality, 
by the time when the Desire of all Nations 
should come. But this day of judgment 
found them unresponsive to their high 
calling, and covetous of mere goods, while 
their one talent, the unspeakable gift of 



32 ENDOWMENT OF HUMAN NATURE, 

God, was tarnished and useless — buried 
in the grave of their bigotry! 

The napkin in which it has been so 
sedulously wrapped must be torn to shreds. 
Their Temple, ritual, and commonwealth, 
must be destroyed. The talent must be 
taken from the unprofitable servant, and 
must be given to other servants who have 
been faithful over a few things, and over 
precisely those things which are spiritual 
talents, and not natural goods. They also 
are standing around Jesus when the won- 
derful parable is pronounced. One of 
them, the writer of this gospel, has been 
trained as a business man; another is full 
of impetuous energy; and another, of keen 
and tender insights; still another will be 
added to their company, a few years later 
who has the training of the great univer- 
sity in Tarsus, and of the theological school 
in Jerusalem. But these are only their 
goods, which they will count as nothing 
after they receive their talents. And to- 
morrow night, in the seclusion of their 
last supper together, Jesus will tell them 
precisely what their talents are. They 
will tarry in Jerusalem until this Divine 
endowment is given. It will come from 
heaven suddenly, with new tongues, proph- 
ecies, and miracle-working faith. The 
revelations and inspirations which have 
been so long smothered by Jewish bigotry, 



THE TALENTS. 33 

will be taken away from the unprofitable 
servant and given to men who will swiftly 
win their way to moral supremacy over 
the whole world. 

These farewell discourses and the prayer 
of Christ the night before He suffered, so 
signally fulfilled in the events of the day 
of Pentecost, are an exact and detailed 
interpretation of the parable of the talents : 

I am not leaving you orphans; I have 
come to show you the Father and to be the 
way, the truth, and the life to you. I am 
going to Him now on purpose to give 
you full power to do greater works than I 
have been doing among you. This new 
endowment will be the Spirit of Truth, 
who will take away your heart troubles, 
keep you in peace, teach you all things, 
and bring My teachings to your remem- 
brance in their full meaning. Then you 
will draw all your life from Me, as the branch 
from the vine, and love one another as I 
have loved you and as My Father has loved 
Me. For I am leaving you in My place. 
You have been glad to call yourselves My 
servants and will always write your names 
as slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is 
true that I have bought you at the cost 
of My life. But I call you My servants 
no more, because a servant has only routine 
work to do at the dictation of a master. 



34 ENDOWMENT OF HUMAN NATURE. 

But the Spirit of the Truth, to be given 
you now, will make you understand all 
things committed to Me by My Father, and 
will invest you with the supreme respon- 
sibility of My kingdom. You will stand 
against the temptations and persecutions 
of a hostile world. It will ostracise and 
murder you. And yet the best possible 
thing for you and for the world also is 
for Me to disappear from your sight, and 
to obtain from the Father this endowment 
of spiritual power, that you may overcome 
hatred by your sufferings and by your 
witness to the truth. I shall be really 
absent only a few days. The coming of 
the Spirit will be also my own invisible, 
but actual, return, to remain with you all 
your days. 

And now ask for everything you need. 
You have come to Me for daily directions 
and encouragements. But up to this 
time you have never asked Me for any- 
thing, compared with the inestimable gift 
I am now promising. I cannot make you 
understand yet what you will need in the 
course of your ministry. I promise you 
all power to discharge the solemn trusts I 
am committing to you. 

And then, after this full description of 
the Divine endowment, it was actually 
obtained by Christ's last sacrificial prayer. 
He presented before His Father the men 



THE TALENTS. 35 

who were to stand in His place in founding 
and in administering His Kingdom. He 
prayed that they might be kept from the 
evil of the world they were about to en- 
counter, and for their uninterrupted com- 
munion with the Father, with Himself, 
and with one another. He prayed for 
victorious power to attend their witness to 
the redemption of the world by His ap- 
proaching death and resurrection. 

From the hour this prayer was answered, 
the apostles were talented men. All power 
in heaven and earth, given into the hands 
of the ascended Redeemer, was transferred 
to them. They could no more use those 
pledges for their benefit, than plenipo- 
tentiaries could make money out of their 
own credentials. But they were omni- 
potent in prayer for the repentance of 
thousands on the day of Pentecost, and for 
the accomplishment of their mission to the 
whole world. Their spiritual powers were 
their talents. 

This restriction of the meaning of the 
word seems to be also a restriction of its 
application to a very limited number of 
His disciples. Mystics, ancient and mod- 
ern, have sometimes made distinctions be- 
tween themselves and ordinary Christians, 
as if they alone were receiving this endow- 
ment of the Spirit for exceptional holiness 



36 ENDOWMENT OF HUMAN NATURE. 

and for special service. Others have been 
too ready to accept this exclusion of them- 
selves from spiritual responsibilities. It 
would be a relief to say I have no talent 
at all ; I am to take my place among those 
other servants. It is a good place. I also 
am bought with a price; I do not belong 
to myself, and none of the goods I am 
handling are mine by my own right. So 
I will be a door-keeper in the house of the 
Lord, take care of the finances of the 
church, and do all the good I can in a 
quiet way. How few are the talented men 
in the gospel sense! Only ten in one 
parable and only three in the other. The 
inspired prophets do not surpass these 
proportions now. I will take orders from 
them, and use my goods faithfully. I 
have not even one talent. 

There is one petition of Christ's conse- 
crating prayer w T hich expressly excludes 
this humility. He prayed not only for the 
eleven men whom He presented before His 
Father, but for all of us who should ever 
believe on Him through their word. And 
He prayed for precisely the same things 
which the Apostles received; that we with 
them might all be one, as the Father and 
the Son are one, and that the unity and 
force of our witness might impart repent- 
ance and faith to a hostile world. This is 
certainly a responsibility which the quiet- 



THE TALENTS; 37 

est of us must share with our talented 
brethren. Have we been oblivious of it 
in our brisk schemes for Christian unity 
without effectual prayers for the Spirit 
who alone can unite us? Have we been 
disobedient to our own heavenly visions 
in a voluntary humility and a worshipping 
of angels of the churches to whom we are 
too eager to assign all spiritual endow- 
ments and responsibilities? 

The fact is, there is no other endowment 
of the spirit on which the Scriptures lay 
such emphasis as on the talent of the quiet 
disciple who loves to work under the direc- 
tion of others. The study to be quiet and 
to do one's own business is inspired work. 
There is one business, at least, for which 
every man is supremely responsible: to 
keep himself unspotted from the w^orld and 
to grow in grace and in the knowledge of 
Christ. No other can trade with this gift, 
and it is not among the things of God 
which are merely good. It may be that 
few of us have received five talents, but 
the most searching lesson of the parable is 
to *the man of one talent. And we can 
all recognize by a moment's reflection 
one gift which is a talent in this restricted 
sense. 

Many years ago, a scholar received the 
highest prize of his college, and from that 
hour began to lose all interest in life. Moth- 



38 ENDOWMENT OF HUMAN NATURE. 

ing could rouse him from his profound de- 
pression, until he went to the president, 
and came out from a long interview, white 
and trembling. The same evening at 
prayers he confessed before the assembled 
professors and students that the prize he 
had received was awarded for an essay 
which he had copied word for word from 
the manuscript of another. He had sur- 
rendered the prize to the president; he 
implored his fellow students not to abate 
their contempt for him, which was im- 
measurably surpassed by his own remorse, 
and he asked only that they would wait 
until he might redeem the confidence which 
he had forfeited. Three years later, when 
he was ordained as a minister of the Gospel 
he made the same confession, and insisted 
on repeating it in his first sermon to the 
church he was to serve. 

The inspiration to make that confession 
was his one talent. There is a parable 
in modern fiction which gives a pathetic 
description of a worse confession by a 
Puritan minister. There was no other 
place in the universe where the heart- 
broken man could have escaped vengeance 
except that scaffold of shame. The stu- 
dent repented in time. He never lost the 
inspiration which began with the Divine 
power to do the hardest duty in the world. 
He lived and died a faithful preacher of 



THE TALENTS. 39 

repentance and righteousness and he is 
remembered with affection and veneration. 

Think of your own conflicts. There is 
a duty before you, clear and imperative. 
Your mind is wide awake. Your con- 
science is clamorous. But you cannot do 
this hard thing. It is literally true; you 
cannot do it. Gradually or suddenly, you 
say to yourself, I ought to do it, I must do 
it, I will do it, and you rise up, and do your 
duty. That is your talent. It is a power 
absolutely supernatural. It is not in your 
intellect, nor in your conscience, nor in 
your will. It is power from on high. It 
is the flaming of conscience by fire from 
the Altar of God. 

This one talent to repent of sin, and to 
do our duty, we have all received. Classifi- 
cations of men as Christians or as worldly 
people are insufferable on such a criterion 
as this. The Kingdom of Heaven has this 
one gift for all men, and it is the greatest 
thing in the world. 

Talented men, according to these par- 
ables, are those, and only •those who are 
moved by a genuine inspiration to do their 
duty. The word must be divested of all 
association with theories of the inspiration 
of the Scriptures. It must also be care- 
fully distinguished from fervour in selfish 
work. With these obvious discrimina- 
tions we may all say, without ostentation 



40 ENDOWMENT OF HUMAN NATURE. 

and with thankfulness to God, that our 
best inspirations are our talents. There 
may be many services which some of us 
can render to God and to our fellow-men 
without inspiration. There is some one 
thing which every true child of God can 
do for righteousness' sake, only with the 
anointing of the Holy Spirit. The talent 
alw 7 ays means consecrated enthusiasm. 

Why should we hesitate to ascribe to the 
Spirit of the Truth, who is Lord and Giver 
of life, the enthusiasm of the great men 
who are saving life by their scientific dis- 
coveries, by their brilliant operations, and 
by their patient services of the suffering? 
The legal adviser whose love of justice is 
a passion, who never covers iniquity by 
subterfuge, but makes the laws of man 
serve the behests of God's righteousness 
is a talented man. Teachers of youth are 
among the most enthusiastic of all Christ's 
disciples ; and the arts and every legitimate 
business in the world must be pursued with 
the same enthusiasm in order to reach 
their highest development and to render 
the services which the Lord requires in the 
exercise of His rarest spiritual gifts. 

The natural gifts which made Mozart 
a genius could not account for the w r ell- 
known scene in the monastery on the 
Danube, when he touched a grand organ 



THE TALENTS. 41 

for the first time. The Lord was calling 
the child, and all that was within him was 
answering, Here am I. Such enthusiasm 
as this must have spiritual qualities, and 
it is always Divine. And it will be sure 
to find an adequate organ. A mightier 
organ than chapel or cathedral possesses 
is this instant sounding all over the land 
and calling our most gifted children. The 
hum of machinery, the rush of freight 
trains, the landing and discharge of car- 
goes, all the thundering crash, and all the 
harmonies, of the world's work: this is the 
Divinest music they can hear and the only 
music they can make. They know how 
to turn inventions to use and to train men 
to work them. They are not shy of artists 
and artisans. They have the courage to 
embark capital in new enterprises. They 
are fired by a venturesome spirit and sus- 
tained by a dogged perseverance. Almost 
as rare as genius for art, and incomparably 
more useful, are the tact, the courage, and 
the patience of averaging the products of 
machinery to the routine work of labourers, 
and to the uses of consumers by trans- 
portation. These rare and splendid en- 
dowments of business men, if only they 
become inspired with enthusiasm for right- 
eousness, always become the commanding 
forces of the Gospel. 



42 ENDOWMENT OF HUMAN NATURE. 

And if not! Then the business man, the 
artist, the physician, the lawyer, the states- 
man, the editor, and even the prophet of 
God, have suffocated their best inspira- 
tions, and are nothing. Their magnificent 
enterprises which have been devoted to 
the relief of the poor, their service in the 
cause that was unpopular which has made 
martyrs of them, and all their splendid 
achievements have been prompted by sheer 
ambition or by fanatical zeal; they have 
no love for the oppressed whose cause they 
have championed, nor for Him who came 
down from heaven to be their brother. 
Their talents must be taken from them, 
and given to another, who may have no 
goods to feed the poor, and neither the 
capacity nor the opportunity for splendid 
service. He is only a good man standing 
in his bank or in his office or in his work- 
shop. By-and-by somebody touches him 
and virtue goes out of him; that virtue is 
nothing less than a divine life in him over- 
coming the baser nature. He is afraid of 
nothing but sin against God, and he cares 
for nothing but to do his duty. And now 
somebody who is shaken by the selfishness 
and cowardice which are enticing him to 
commit an outrageous fraud touches this 
flaming conscience, and he will feel the 
contact to the last day of his life. 



THE TALENTS. 43 

Let every man abide in his own calling 
and beware of burying his talent. An ac- 
cusing conscience, an unresponsive temper, 
a cynical spirit, and a false notion of in- 
dependence, will smother the inspirations 
of the profoundest scholar. An ambition 
for wealth and display will smother the 
inspirations of the business man. They 
are the unspeakable gifts of Him who be- 
came a business man in order to be the 
teacher of all men who labour and are 
heavy laden. He invites every man to 
take His yoke. It is a yoke for two, and 
He is the other. The burden is light be- 
cause of this Divine companionship. He 
that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit. 



CHAPTER IV. 

FINANCIAL REPENTANCE; THE UNJUST 
STEWARD. 

Peace is not yet, and wrong and want and woe 

Cry in the city streets, and love is slow, 

And sin is sleek and swift and housed and fed. 

Sophie Jewett. 

For my own part, if I had an insupportable burden, if 
for any cause I were bent on sacrificing every earthly hope 
as a peace offering towards heaven, I would make the wide 
world my cell, and good deeds to mankind my prayer. 
Many penitent men have done this and found peace in it. 

Hawthorne 

The parable of the prodigal who is spend- 
ing money unscrupulously is instantly 
followed by a parable of the steward who 
is making money unscrupulously. And 
to emphasize the greater guilt and danger 
of dishonest accumulations, another par- 
able is added, of the rich man in hell. 
Spending money is not the worst way of 
wasting the bounty of God. They shall 
receive the greater damnation who live 
in luxury and leave beggars to perish at 
their gates. 

And yet they are stewards of God. We 
need no Gospel to tell us that princely 

44 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 45 

benefactors, who have amassed all their 
wealth by the golden rule, are discharging 
a sacred trust. But our gamblers in futures, 
our managers of trusts, our manufacturers 
who keep the upper hand by freezing out 
all competition? Yes, they are all ste- 
wards of God. None of the wealth they 
are wasting belongs to themselves. No- 
body else can lay hands on it. They have 
supreme responsibility, and they are wast- 
ing, not by riotous living, but by extortions 
and by resistless combinations, the capital, 
the safe-guards of law, the financial regula- 
tion of business, and their own shrewdness 
and training. All these inestimable values 
have been committed to them by the 
Master, who knows how long to give free- 
play to their avarice, for the building of 
rail-roads, for the opening of mines, and 
for the cheapening of products needful to 
His children. They are called to account 
as soon as His purposes are ripe to bring 
good out of their wicked designs. 

Too late for repentance in the next 
parable. Was it too late in this also? 
This is the crucial question in our interpre- 
tation, and it is a question of life and death 
to unscrupulous business men of our times. 
They are accused of wasting their Lord's 
goods. Their defence is that they are mak- 
ing good use of their millions. But how? By 



46 FINANCIAL REPENTANCE. 

by the employment of labour and art to 
minister to their luxury ! This defence has 
been reduced to absurdity a thousand times 
by history and by the soundest princi- 
ples of economics. They are accused, not 
by Anarchists and Communists and Social- 
ists only. The attorneys, who have access 
to their books, and who conduct their litiga- 
tion, protest against their monopolies. Po- 
litical campaigns are fought on charges of 
enormous frauds specified in detail. These 
charges are not made after the accused are 
dead and buried, but while their balance- 
sheets are capable of adjustment. It is not 
too late, it is high time to think, and it, is 
suicide not to think; what shall I do when 
my Lord takes away my stewardship? I 
have lived in luxury so long that I am too 
feeble to dig, and too proud to beg. What 
is to become of me now? 

Supremely selfish thoughts, started by 
no compunctions, only by base fears. 
Yes, but what else did Christ intend by 
these awful parables, except to rouse their 
fears? If conscience needs an earthquake, 
why not frighten an unscrupulous man 
out of the delusion that he can go on for 
ever cornering markets and collecting 
dividends? It is appointed to him once 
to die, and after that the judgment. This 
parable and its sequel will make him think 
of the days when he will be carried to his 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 47 

burial from his splendid mansion, and when 
the papers will announce that he has left 
twenty millions. And that will be a lie; 
his millions will have left him, and it will 
be too late to falsify or to amend the ac- 
count of his stewardship. 

But he is not in torment yet. Here is a 
preliminary parable, starting thoughts not 
less agitating and selfish, but far more 
heartening. It is not too late. Here is 
another millionaire in precisely his peril, 
who did something which saved him from 
ruin. He made a sudden change in his 
business methods while he was still in 
charge, which secured him a good place 
after his final settlement with his present 
employer. What sort of a transaction was 
this? Turn to your commentaries. Read 
the lesson leaflets which are put into the 
hands of the bright boys in our Sunday- 
schools. Listen to the eulogies pronounced 
on founders of colossal charities from their 
vintage out of Naboth's vineyard. The 
popular reading of this parable makes out 
that the last was the meanest, the most 
tricky, and the most scandalous game this 
scoundrel ever played in his life; that he 
scaled down all the credits on his books, 
settled with clients who were good for the 
whole, at varying reductions to eighty or 
fifty cents on the dollar, left the proprietor 
in the lurch for the loss, and for this un- 



48 FINANCIAL REPENTANCE. 

disguised bribery secured employment and 
a good living to himself after his discharge ! 

It is no defence of this interpretation to 
say that the man's own master, not ours, 
commended this sharp practice. Does our 
Lord say a word against his conduct, or 
make it in any way a contrast rather than 
a resemblance to His own portraits of good 
stewards? Does He not tell us that such 
men are wiser than children of light? 
Would He leave it to be inferred that 
honesty is sometimes not even the best 
policy? Would He charge all His disciples, 
one of whom He knew to be a thief already, 
to resort to cheating in order to make to 
themselves friends who would receive them 
into everlasting habitations? What kind 
of "a place has He gone to prepare for us, 
if our welcome to its many mansions is to 
be extended by the condoners of our own 
frauds ! 

The best way to meet an insurmountable 
difficulty in Scripture is to look at it calmly, 
and pass around it to other truths which 
you can undertsand. The worst way to 
meet this difficulty is to ascribe ethical 
nonsense to your Divine Teacher. In fact, 
there is a very simple way of surmounting 
the acknowledged difficulty here. Con- 
jectures are never admissible in the ap- 
plication which Christ makes of His par- 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 49 

ables. He tells us expressly that no man 
can serve two masters. And this parable 
points out the way xo settle w T ith mammon 
before beginning the service of God. We 
are not informed what the exact method 
was, but it must have been a righteous 
settlement even with mammon. Jesus is 
talking to publicans and to Pharisees and 
to Judas Iscariot. He is calling men who 
have been guilty of sharp practices all their 
lives to become spiritual stewards over the 
true riches of the kingdom of heaven. But 
they must come to Him with clean hands . 
They have not been faithful with the un- 
righteous mammon. They must make the 
best possible settlement of their extortions 
and frauds, and they must bring vouchers 
for contents of the bags they carry. They 
must repent of their dishonesty, and be 
faithful over what little is left after they 
have made just restitution. 

So far we have not made a single con- 
jecture. The man in the parable com- 
mended his steward w T ho had been dis- 
honest because at last he did something 
wisely; and Jesus said: Make friends for 
yourselves by means of the mammon of 
unrighteousness; be faithful in the un- 
righteous mammon; you have had the 
handling of trust funds and have submitted 
to the bondage of mammon, but now r you 



SO FINANCIAL REPENTANCE. 

are called to^serve God, and you must 
break away from that thraldom. 

The only difficulty is that we do not 
know what that wise thing was which the 
dishonest steward did at last. Here con- 
jecture is admissible. Such conjectures 
are always useful in filling out the details 
of stories briefly reported in the gospels. 
Imagination may expand what the fright- 
ened man was saying within himself: I 
am doomed to lose my place ; I was a poor 
man when I took it, but I have made it 
enormously profitable; the original capital 
will be all that the owner will find, for I 
have embezzled all the profits; he will 
prosecute me, and then my false entries 
and fraudulent contracts will be brought 
to light; I might get away with some of 
the plunder, but where can I ever set up 
business again ? My reputation will follow 
me, and I can never get another place. 
No; I shall have to disgorge in any case, 
and while I am about it I may as well make 
thorough work. I am resolved to surrender 
all my accumulations, impoverish myself 
now, and so make all possible reparation 
to my employer. He will discharge me, 
of course, but there is another chance for 
me. I have cheated in ever so many 
accounts which are not yet settled. Who 
knows, but justice, at this late day may get 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 51 

me another chance to become an honest 
man, and to obtain employment? Here 
come the very men who may yet save me 
from ruin. 

How much do you owe? A hundred 
measures of oil? Yes, I remember you 
gave me your note for a hundred. But I 
only delivered fifty. See, I tear up the 
extortionate note. I sold the other fifty 
and pocketed the cash. Write a new note 
for fifty. 

And you ; how much wheat did I deliver 
on this note for a hundred measures? 
Eighty? — exactly; and there is no charge 
on the books for the twenty I kept back. 
Write me an honest note for the eighty. 

And so on, until by the time the reckon- 
ing has come he has made every possible 
reparation. Vast frauds are beyond recall, 
but not beyond confession. The entries 
as profit and loss have balanced the em- 
bezzlements which he cannot make good, 
and he faces his employer at last, a bank- 
rupt without a dollar of assets. His mas- 
ter commends his repentance, and the 
debtors who have received partial justice 
at his hands take him on a moderate salary 
and give him another chance. 

If we are to make conjectures at all, let 
them be at least within the bounds of com- 
mon-sense and of reverence to Christ. 



52 FINANCIAL REPENTANCE. 

That this was the settlement implied in the 
parable is rendered almost certain by a 
true story in the sequel. Zacchaeus may 
have been among the publicans who list- 
ened to these words; and when another 
parable told how a publican might be 
justified, he resolved to see Jesus. Now 
he longs to get into a temple where he also 
can express his remorse. But One greater 
than the Temple enters his own house, 
which is filled with the plunder of the reve- 
nue. He makes unreserved confession of 
his extortions. To read his words, as if 
he meant to say: I have always been 
accustomed to give away half my goods 
and to make amends for false accusation, 
is as contrary to the text as to all we know 
of the fiscal system by farming. Jesus re- 
plies to what he says : This day is salvation 
come to this house. This is the hour of 
repentance for a son of Abraham who has 
sold his soul to the oppressors of his nation. 
Now, standing before the people he has 
cheated, and before the Lord who is search- 
ing his heart, he makes over by a covenant, 
as binding as a deed, the full half of his 
wealth to the poor tradesmen who have 
enriched him by double payments of assess- 
ments bought of the government in ad- 
vance. This atrocious revenue system 
has protected him in levying blackmail, 
taking hush-money, and practising all sorts 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 53 

of extortions. He pledges himself now to 
restore fourfold for all these exactions. 
This is salvation; and this must always be 
the faithfulness of a steward who has been 
unjust. Not a shrewd compromise, but 
taking the fifty or the twenty per cent, off 
from the watered stock and restoring values 
which have been lost by legalized frauds. 
Honesty first. Fourfold reparation, to be 
on the safe side. Financial repentance. 

This parable and its perfect interpreta- 
tion in the case of Zacchaeus is therefore 
a gospel for dishonest men. Their Saviour 
is giving them here their one talent — a 
flaming conscience. They can do some- 
thing before their accounts are closed. 
And the first thing they have to do, certain- 
ly, and very likely all they will ever have to 
do, is to be faithful with the mammon of 
unrighteousness. They know how to 
handle that. With no talent at all, with 
nothing but natural shrewdness and ac- 
quired skill they have made it enormously 
profitable. Now they have the talent to 
make it earn true riches. It is a talent 
more widely distributed and more useful 
than the gift of prophecy. Business is 
business, and the kingdom of God needs 
inspired business-men. The everlasting 
habitations are not all in the heavenly 
world. Business men must make friends 



54 FINANCIAL REPENTANCE. 

in workshops where daily duties are recog- 
nized as divine. They must use the mam- 
mon of unrighteousness to make friends, 
first of all, with the clients who have suffer- 
ed from their sharp practices. Many of 
these defrauded men are now in a kingdom 
of heaven where resentment cannot burn 
in their hearts. They are doing honest 
work to retrieve their losses, and also to 
lend a helping hand to their fellow-men. 
The life they are living in their business has 
eternal qualities. And they would gladly 
receive the enemies who have wronged 
them most. The unjust stewards must re- 
pent of their sharp practices, and make 
friends of all honest men, if it costs them 
their last dollar. 

And we must make friends with them. 
Christian men in banks and offices! Why 
don't you preach this gospel to your un- 
scrupulous associates ? They will not come 
to our meeting-houses, and they never give 
us a fair hearing if they do come. We 
don't know how to talk to them. You 
can always get at them. You can't say a 
word if you also are wasting the Lord's 
goods. But with clean hands and a good 
conscience you have the talents and the 
opportunities to be Christ's only witnesses 
to them. Why don't you read this par- 
able to them ? If they will not listen unless 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 55 

they are scared, reverse the order and begin 
with Dives. But tell them it is not too 
late. The speculator with trust funds for 
his collaterals need not be cast into outer 
darkness where there shall be wailing and 
gnashing of teeth. The rich man who is 
clothed in purple and fares sumptuously 
every day, need not die and be buried and 
lift up his eyes in hell being in torment. 
There is another parable which is a true 
gospel for the most unscrupulous men in 
the world. 

Only don't twist and torture it into an 
apology for the very frauds which are al- 
ready stunning conscience. Read your 
parable just as it stands, but for Christ's 
sake don't go on to comment in this style: 
Get all the money you can, make a bargain 
with the surveyor of a new railroad that 
you will give him half the profits of your 
real estate speculations for a copy of his 
survey in advance of his report to the 
company; buy the farms where stations 
and cities must soon follow construction, 
inflate your manufacturing stocks by form- 
ing fictitious companies within your cor- 
porations, and by paying flush dividends 
out of one hand into the other ; then unload 
them on widows and orphans and ministers, 
just before they begin to fail. Make con- 
tributions to both political parties and 
secure the pull on enormous contracts at 



56 FINANCIAL REPENTANCE. 

double the profits fair competition would 
yield. Buy up or freeze out all rivals to 
your monopoly. Get and keep control 
of all the mammon of unrighteousness you 
can. And then make it righteous. Give 
unheard-of sums to libraries, hospitals, and 
missionary boards. Make friends of those 
who are sure to go to heaven, and they will 
call you a saint for your wonderful works, 
and pronounce your eulogy when you die, 
and then they will sing sweet hymns about 
your welcome to the everlasting habita- 
tions. 

Sweep these mufflers from conscience, and 
make it ring true. To earn money right- 
eously is the only way to be faithful in its 
stewardship. And there is only one way 
for the dishonest man to begin. Right 
about face. Fifty per cent, restitution off 
one fraudulent contract, twenty per cent, 
off another, justice to the hair's breadth 
in advance of generosity, perpendicular 
financial repentance. 

Thus the mammon of unrighteousness 
actually becomes a means of grace for 
entering into the kingdom of heaven on 
earth. Unscrupulous men of wealth have 
nothing else to work with. They know 
how to do business, and that is all they 
know. Doing business as slaves of mam- 
mon is hell. But the great gulf is not fixed 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 57 

yet. Tears and prayers will not get them 
across. Their mammon is precisely the 
thing they need for their salvation. They 
cannot keep it, and try to make new friends 
by colossal charities. They must surrender 
it to make compensation to their rivals in 
business and to their own workmen. Then 
their former enemies will be turned into 
their best friends, and will be the first to 
receive them into everlasting habitations. 

The nineteenth century will close with 
unsettled accounts of the stewards in 
charge of the common wealth of the United 
States. One combination took charge of 
the coal oil products, with little or no 
capital, in 1862, gained two millions and a 
half in ten years, increased it to seventy 
millions in ten more, and in 1892 it was 
worth one hundred and sixty-six and a 
half millions, after distributing more than 
a hundred millions as dividends. Another 
combination has taken the stewardship of 
the fuel of the people, and in about twenty- 
five years it has amassed a capital of five 
hundred millions. The stewards of sugar 
have replaced the original capital of ten 
millions by bonds of the same amount, 
issued capital which is ail water, of seventy- 
five millions, and are raising the price of 
this commodity enough to make profits of 
twenty-eight millions a year. Every com- 



5# FINANCIAL REPENTANCE. 

fort of life and the very caskets of the dead 
are rapidly passing into the control of these 
modern stewards. 

And the day of settlement is rapidly 
approaching. The twentieth century will 
certainly witness the end of this revival 
of the monopolies of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Will the end come without another 
revolution? No prophet can say, but God 
is saying by the events of His providence, 
and by the voice of the people, to every 
unjust steward, Thou canst be no longer 
steward! Woe unto them that join house 
to house and lay field to field till there be 
no place, that they may be placed alone 
in the midst of the earth. They are wast- 
ing the food, the light, the warmth, and all 
the good things of their fathers' children, 
and their stewardship must cease. 

They can prevent revolutions. Perhaps 
neither civil government, nor labour unions, 
nor reform agencies can displace these 
stewards without violence, but they have 
it in their power to displace themselves. 
And they would instantly find themselves 
in better places. They are the best- 
equipped men in the land for service 
urgently needed at this moment. They 
have in hand the means to arrest the waste 
and to make restitution for the robbery of 
modern business methods. And this par- 
able is a summons to timely and merciful 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 59 

judgment. It brands upon conscience the 
infamy of continuing to be exploiters of 
unearned profits, and it extends a sure 
hope to all the unjust stewards in the world 
that they may yet become eminent public 
servants. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE LABOUR QUESTION! THE OTHER SIDE ; 
THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 1. 

I saw the great treading down the little, and the strong- 
beating down the weak, and cruel men fearing not, and 
kind men daring not, and wise men caring not; and the 
saints in heaven forbearing and yet bidding me not to 
forbear; forsooth I knew that he who doeth well in fellow- 
ship, and because of fellowship, shall not fail, though he seem 
to fail to-day, but in days hereafter shall he and his work 
be alive, and men be holpen by them to strive again and 
yet again. 

William Morris. 

Certain scholarly men are rising up and 
tempting us, asking questions which are 
common to politics, economics, ethics, and 
spiritual Christianity. We are bound to 
follow our Master's example, and to wel- 
come their investigations. Earlier phases 
of materialism and atheism are already dis- 
carded. Philanthropists who are not yet 
avowed disciples of Christ are looking for 
a life which will transfigure and survive 
the miseries they seek to relieve. They 
are reading what is written in their own 
hearts as legibly as the law r is written in 
our Scriptures. 

60 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. — I. 6l 

We can work with all social reformers, 
even if their programme is not positively 
Christian, unless they start another ques- 
tion: Who is my neighbour? This cavil 
is not always pushed to the front by cor- 
porations which need to justify themselves. 
A distinguished professor in one of our 
greatest universities defines the State as 
"all of us," and reduces the question of 
legal restraints to the accumulation of 
capital to this: What claim have some of 
us on all of us? A philosopher exclaims: 
' 'Do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, 
of my obligation to put poor men in good 
situations. Are they my poor? I tell 
thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I 
grudge every dollar and dime and cent I 
give to such men as do not belong to me. 
There is a class of persons to whom by all 
spiritual affinities I am bought and sold; 
for them I will go to prison if need be. 
But do not talk to me of your miscel- 
laneous popular charities." 

Concede that all this is true, and what 
bearing has it on our present-day questions ? 
The pauper does not belong to hard-work- 
ing mechanics; the convicted thief does 
not belong to the industrious and honest 
community; the drunkard does not be- 
long to the temperate; who are my neigh- 
bours? My family, my friends, my as- 
sociates and equals in thrift, intelligence, 



62 THE LABOUR QUESTION. — I. 

refinement and spiritual affinities; I love 
my neighbour as myself; but this mob of 
the illiterate, thriftless and indigent, al- 
ways going down to Jericho — they are 
nowhere near me. If the question who is 
neighbour to me deserves an answer, per- 
haps this is the best that could be given. 
But the amazing thing is that such a man 
as Ralph Waldo Emerson could have 
started this impertinent question. 

Our version leaves the impression that 
Christ ' 'answered" the question of the 
lawyer. But the word literally means 
"taking up." Christ took up the specious 
question, flung it away in shame and ever- 
lasting contempt, and asked another, 
which has revolutionized our thinking and 
set free our imprisoned hopes: Who was 
neighbour to him that fell among the 
thieves ? The question is actually stronger 
than this. The verb to become is used, 
not the verb to be. Up to this time all 
three of the passers-by were strangers to 
the sufferer. They approached, not "by 
chance," but by a coincidence, by a "fall- 
ing together" of things which God had 
provided for this necessity. And then the 
question turned around and faced the 
other way: Which of these three became 
neighbour to him that fell among thieves? 
The other question was shameful. The 
caviller himself is obliged to answer the 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. — I. 63 

new question. He said, I say, you say, 
all the world says, with one of those in- 
stinctive first thoughts on which conscience 
will tolerate no arguing: He that showed 
mercy on him. The voluntary paupers 
and the inveterate criminals of our times 
do not belong to us; do we belong to them? 
They are nowhere near us ; can we get near 
them? We are on the other side; can we 
get over on their side? And then when 
we see them bleeding and half dead, will 
the dollar and dime and cent be given 
grudgingly? Oh, Emerson, thou high 
priest of transcendental philosophy, sur- 
rounded by Levites of like spiritual affini- 
ties, it was not far across the Concord river 
to a scene which would have made the 
quality of thy mercy less strained. 

But after all, the traditional interpreta- 
tion of this parable as the classic text for 
miscellaneous charities is wholly at fault. 
Visiting those who are in prison, and catch- 
ing those who ought to be, are equally re- 
mote from its injunctions. Nothing is 
said here about our obligations to the es- 
caped thieves, and the traveller was not a 
pauper. He was so well dressed that his 
raiment was worth plundering; he had 
money and jewels worth fighting for, and 
he was a stalwart fellow who was left half 
dead because he would not stand and de- 



64 THE LABOUR QUESTION.— I. 

liver. Even the professor, who has no 
higher ideal of the nation than a con- 
glomeration of all of us, will not deny that 
some of us can claim protection from high- 
way robbery. Natural law arms even 
private citizens with authority, and charges 
them with the duty to protect and relieve 
victims of injustice. There are parables 
enough for almsgiving. This calls for 
nothing but justice to self-supporting men 
pursuing their lawful callings. When was 
the call more urgent than now? Where 
can men go and not fall among thieves? 
Why are they left half dead, when a little 
oil and wine and credit at a wayside inn 
will start them in business once more? 
Why not run to their rescue before they fall 
among thieves? Our parable is the search- 
light turned on these tremendous questions 
of the times, and our first attention must 
be fixed on its detection of the long pro- 
cession passing by on the other side. 

The ideal theocracy, with a priestly class 
assisted by their kinsmen, all of them 
servants and intimate friends of the people, 
was never realized. In the dark and 
cloudy days of their history the shepherds 
no longer healed the sick nor bound up the 
broken nor brought again that which was 
driven away nor sought that which was 
lost, but ruled the people with force and 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 1. 65 

cruelty. The ancient ideal was restored 
in the ministry of the Apostles and their 
helpers, and approached fulfilment in the 
Christian Church under Jewish and Pagan 
persecution. A slave was often the pastor 
of a church in the largest house of some 
neighbourhood, and no other disciple 
rendered him more reverence and obedi- 
ence in his sacred office than his own 
master. Too soon the separation of clergy 
and laity began again, lordly functions 
were assumed by a graded priesthood, and 
the oppressions of the hierarchy went on 
until the clerical class got possession of 
one-third of the land, and tithed and fined 
the people beyond endurance. The Church 
passed by on the other side, until a benefi- 
cent revolution was seized by the madness 
of atheism. 

Meantime, the patrician ideals of the 
ancient civilizations, not destitute of good 
aspirations for service to plebeians, had 
been lost, and impassable gulfs were open- 
ing between them. Nobles w T ere living 
in distant cities and scarcely ever saw the 
workmen on their estates. Ladies of the 
Court frankh r expressed doubts whether 
their serfs were human beings. Royal and 
baronial classes were passing by on the 
other side. And the exiles from persecu- 
tion made it their first care in building a 
nation on this Continent to divest the 



66 THE LABOUR QUESTION. — t. 

Church of all political power, to prohibit 
for ever all classes of nobility and to guard 
jealously the self-evident truth that all men 
are created free and equal. We supposed 
that emancipation had eradicated the last 
traces of these age-long and universal bar- 
barisms. In fact, the unprecedented ex- 
pansion of profitable business immediately 
after the Civil War has introduced in a 
single generation a class distinction in 
American citizenship, between those who 
are immensely rich and those who are 
barely earning a living, which is quite as 
formidable as the castes which our fathers 
discarded. And socialists are rising up all 
over the country and asking us furious 
questions : — 

Is the wage system dividing profits fairly 
between capital and labour combined in 
the same business? Can any system be 
devised which will be fair so long as profits 
remain as the chief end in view? Colossal 
corporations have destroyed the balance 
of power once afforded by competition: 
is it not high time to displace competition 
altogether, and to form one corporation 
of all the people for mutual benefit, con- 
ducted by impartial law? Why should 
the Civil Government fail to manage tele- 
graphs, telephones, express, freight, and 
passenger traffic, electric cars, gas, water, 
and all public services, at least as well as 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. — I. 67 

it now manages the Post Office and the 
common schools? And why should not 
this control be gradually extended to min- 
ing, and to all business which requires 
enormous capital? Above all, and first 
of all, why should not the Government 
assume the management of all the real 
estate business of the country? The 
single tax affords the natural remedy for 
all our distress, so we are told. Out of the 
accumulations of the richest families, over 
all possible expenses for luxuries, it is 
estimated that only four per cent, a year 
is taken by our present system by taxation, 
while the revenue absorbs, directly and in- 
directly, seventy-eight per cent, of the 
hard savings of the poorest class. The 
land belongs to all the people as rightfully 
as air and sunlight. The rapidly-increas- 
ing value of city lots has been created by 
the whole community. Speculators have 
no right to the unearned increment of 
vacant land. If all taxes were levied on 
land values, the burden would be fairly 
distributed. Why not begin all social 
reforms with this simple and righteous 
revision of our constitutions? 

These economic questions are very 
tempting. There are others which touch 
the Christian conscience to the quick: — 

Is our present system of taxation upon 



68 THE LABOUR QUESTION. L 

industry anything else but legalized rob- 
bery? What right have the coal barons 
of Pennsylvania, and the mining corpora- 
tions of the West, and the Standard Oil 
Company, to the richest treasures of this 
continent stored up by our Father in 
heaven for the comfort of all His children? 
This race for enormous wealth was started 
by fraudulent Army contracts, by floating 
bond issues while the life of the nation was 
at stake, by the sale of shoddy goods, by 
fictitious inflation of prices, and by all 
sorts of speculations. Can it be that there 
is no law and no power in heaven or earth 
to arrest this aggrandising of estates which 
are already a menace to civilization, and 
to protect working men from confiscation? 
Our young men are robbed of independent 
careers. There is scarcely an industry 
left among us which may not be ruined in 
a month by corporations earning ten per 
cent, dividends on stock diluted to half its 
cost. Can it be that we have abolished 
slavery and have no resource against those 
who are saying to free men: Work for us 
at just what we choose to pay, or we will 
starve your families to death? Nearly all 
our great trunk lines of railroads have been 
built by mortgages on the air; the right 
of way was purchased for stock which cost 
the corporation little or nothing; payment 
was made for construction, mile by mile, 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. — I. 69 

as fast as the tracks were laid, from bonds 
issued with no collateral security; fictitious 
dividends were declared by reckoning as 
legitimate profits the freight paid by con- 
struction companies which were only the 
railroad company under another name; 
thus the stock was boomed for the final 
wreck and for the unscrupulous receiver. 
Can it be that righteous law is incompetent 
to abolish the borrowing power of corpora- 
tions which has made beggars of widows 
and orphans? 

These explosive questions of our So- 
cialists are all summed up in one: Twelve 
millions of American families are falling 
among thieves; who else are the thieves 
except the richest class of our citizens, and 
our municipal, state and national govern- 
ments, which are paying a bounty on their 
extortions ? 

This is a solemn and a very tempting 
question, but our parable does not answer 
it, nor even take it up. A revenue system 
immeasurably worse than ours was in 
force, and the oppressions of labour were 
the cruellest ever exacted, and yet Jesus 
steadfastly refused to interfere with the 
things that were Caesar's. The heart of 
His gospel in its application to the labour 
question is in this parable, and its appeal 
to the richest men is not revolutionary. 
He only entreats them to take sides with 



TO THE LABOUR QUESTION. — I. 

all who are falling among thieves. They 
protest that their wealth has been gained, 
not only in strict accordance with common 
and statute law, but by natural and ir- 
resistible tendencies; that every necessity 
of life has been cheapened by corporations 
combining enormous capital ; that our civil 
service is already corrupt, and that it 
would be quite incompetent for vastly ex- 
tended enterprises; and finally, that the 
full play of voluntary associations in busi- 
ness, in spite of unavoidable evils, is the 
best possible system, and that all socialis- 
tic schemes will lead straight to anarchy ; 
in short, that men of enormous wealth 
are not thieves, but honest men, minding 
their own business. If all this were con- 
ceded, it would not touch the question be- 
fore us. Our Lord is teaching us how to 
mind our own business so as to get over 
on the side of men who are suffering in- 
justice. Is modern business tending in 
this direction? Some of the greatest and 
best men in the country have been forced 
into these trusts, and are making it their 
business to resist injustice, and to invest 
their profits for the benefit of their work- 
men. But what is the actual position of 
the controllers of our industry as a class? 

It is a conceded fact that men of enor- 
mous wealth are more widely separated, 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. — I. 7 1 

by the nature of things, from working men 
than feudal barons were from their serfs. 
What can a man with a surplus income of 
a million to reinvest every year know of 
a family making its deposit of a dollar a 
month in the savings bank ? He may pass 
that way and look on them. Can he pos- 
sibly get to them where they are? There 
is a limit to the long-distance telephone, 
and human nature is not capable of work- 
ing sympathies across such oceans of space. 
It is the position, not the character, of this 
rapidly-increasing class of our citizens 
which separates them from the rest of us. 
They are not bad men. Nearly all of them 
profess to be disciples of Christ. The two 
largest fortunes in real estate belong to 
families in the Episcopal Church. The 
greatest manufacturing business is controll- 
ed by a deacon of a Baptist Church. Of 
two railroad investments worth a hundred 
millions each, one belongs to an adherent 
of the Presbyterian Church, the other to a 
member of the Episcopal Church, who is 
also an earnest worker in Young Men's 
Christian Associations. Ninety-five per 
cent, of the richest men in the United 
States are Protestants. Nobody questions 
their sincerity or their honest intentions; 
and yet they are passing by on the other 
side. There are noble exceptions. But 
every man among them who is known to 



72 THE LABOUR QUESTION. — I. 

be a good Samaritan instantly becomes 
the most conspicuous man in America. 
Nearly all of them are as separate from the 
people in their pews as in their mansions. 
With no bad intent, and often against their 
protests, they are making class distinctions 
in American churches. We are devising 
people's churches and institutional churches ; 
we are talking about civic churches; we 
are training experts to hold the families of 
working men within reach of the Gospel. 
The Protestant Church which succeeds in 
the very thing and the only thing which 
Christ and the apostles demanded of local 
churches is a marvellous object in any 
American city and its minister is a genius. 
It may be the fault of the people who 
shrink from contact with the richest fam- 
ilies anywhere. The fact is obvious and 
incontestible : in homes, in clubs, and in 
churches, the richest and the poorest are 
separate. Excluding all of us who can be 
classed with neither, and of course exclud- 
ing criminals and voluntary paupers, we 
have one class of ten thousand families and 
another of twelve million self-supporting 
and self-respecting families — two classes 
divided and diverging. 

What are we going to do about it ? That 
question will open another chapter. Let 
this be closed by a revised version of our 
parable in modern American language: — 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. — I, 73 

A certain man went down from his 
country home to Chicago, invested all his 
capital in a factory of small wares 
and fell among — department stores ! They 
ruined him by putting bankrupt stocks of 
the same goods on the market at half the 
cost of production. They bought his 
stock to ruin somebody else with, employed 
him as salesman, until he fell ill from disap- 
pointment and overwork. Then he went 
to the hospital, and his family went to the 
poor-house. 

A certain man started a small oil re- 
finery in Indiana, and was offered twenty- 
five per cent, more than cost for his plant 
as soon as it began to yield good profits. 
He declined, simply because he wanted a 
business of his own. Later he was offered 
fifty per cent, advance, with a significant 
hint that this was his last chance. He de- 
clined again, and the next time his tanks 
were full he could neither obtain barrels 
nor transportation for his product at prices 
that would save cost. He was ruined, 
and in due time found his way to the same 
hospital in Chicago. 

A certain man sold his homestead in 
Vermont and went West to purchase a 
new farm. He w^as persuaded to invest 
his capital in a railroad just completed and 
paying six per cent, on the stock, with an 
annual bonus. The dividends were 



74 THE LABOUR QUESTION.— -I. 

promptly paid and the bonus, and some 
savings were invested in new blocks of 
stock offered only to holders of the original. 
The stock rose from seventy to one hun- 
dred and seventeen. Then came the col- 
lapse, and he sold out at five, and worried 
himself into nervous prostration, and was 
taken to the same hospital in Chicago. 

Then by chance a certain preacher passed 
through its wards, heard these three stories, 
and preached a tremendous sermon on the 
golden rule. A reporter interviewed the 
three men, and wrote a flaming article with 
startling headlines. A sensational novel 
was published in two volumes founded on 
these outrages. A lawyer called a public 
meeting which voted ten scathing resolu- 
tions and took up a collection for the starv- 
ing families. And at last a little book was 
printed about parables telling over again 
the same tedious stories. Men and breth- 
ren! Are we Priests and Levites doing 
nothing better than this to become neigh- 
bours to the really honest and industrious 
and capable workmen who are falling among 
thieves all around us? 

At last a certain socialist passed that 
way. He was a German agnostic, and 
never went to church, but spent most of 
his Sundays in hospitals. He stormed and 
raved at the men who had ruined these 
poor fellows, and denounced them also as 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 1. 75 

fools. Did not they know better than to 
get into such dens of robbers? Why didn't 
they sell out at fifty per cent, profit, or at 
a hundred and seventeen? And what was 
the use of trying to do anything for such 
idiots? Nevertheless, he won their con- 
fidence by his gruff sympathies, gave them 
hope enough to get well on, set them up in 
a safe business once more, kept them from 
ever venturing beyond their depth again, 
and today they are content with moderate 
earnings, and are happy in modest homes. 
Which of us all, thinkest thou, became 
neighbour to the men who fell among 
thieves? Go and do thou likewise. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE LABOUR QUESTION! THE RIGHT SIDE; 
THE GOOD SAMARITAN. II. 

There may come a time when we shall all understand that 
our tendency to the individual appropriation of gold and 
broad acres, fine houses, and such good and beautiful things 
as are equally enjoyable by a multitude, is but a trait of 
imperfectly developed intelligence. When that day dawns, 
there will be no more poor in the streets nor need of alms- 
houses. — Hawthorne. 

Why did Jesus make a Samaritan the good 
neighbour of His story? Why did He not 
select a Samaritan and a Herodian as ex- 
amples of those who were passing by on 
the other side, and describe an Israelite 
without guile who had compassion on the 
sufferer? A short time before, the dis- 
ciples proposed to call down fire from heav- 
en to consume certain Samaritans who 
would not receive their Master, and this 
alien race was always odious for its heresy. 
And yet orthodoxy in the parable is lifted 
up to bad eminence by reason of its in- 
humanity, while philanthropy makes heresy 
almost lovely. How true and how pro- 
phetic is the story as it stands! The men 
who might have saved France from the 
76 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. II. 77 

Revolution were banished for heresy. 
The Established Church has often been 
on the wrong side of every reform in Eng- 
land, from Wiclif to John Bright, and all 
the Churches were late in coming over to 
the right side of the anti-slavery contest 
in America. Jesus praises the compassion 
of a heretic and repudiates the orthodoxy 
which is oblivious to human misery. 

But this reproach has been largely re- 
moved. Our priests and Levites are doing 
much, and trying to do a thousand things 
beyond their power, to right the wrongs 
of working-men. They are preaching an 
uncompromising gospel to the rich, charg- 
ing them not to live in ostentation nor to 
make an idol of their wealth, and entreat- 
ing them to be mindful of their stewardship 
over gifts of God intended for the enjoy- 
ment of all His children. And they are not 
preaching a garbled gospel to the poor — 
contentment with their lot and thankful- 
ness for charity. They are manfully tak- 
ing the part of all who suffer injustice. 
Exceptions prove the rule; the spiritual, 
as well as the ethical and economic teaching 
of our times, is thoroughly on the side of 
the men who are falling among thieves. 

Nevertheless, the parable holds good. 
Priests and Levites are not getting precisely 
into the place of this good Samaritan. 
They are in despair because the worst suf- 



78 THE LABOUR QUESTION. II. 

ferers will not come to church, and they are 
suspected of perfunctory service when they 
visit the poor. College professors and re- 
form writers cannot do the exact thing 
that most needs to be done. In fact, this 
is not the business of preachers and 
lecturers and reformers, and they will be 
sure to bungle it if they lay hold. They 
are the recruiting officers of the noble army 
of good Samaritans. They construct theo- 
ries of the relation of ethics to economics, 
collect funds for reform and organize 
charities. But neither teaching nor money 
can do the actual work required. Hired 
workers are too far off. The labour re- 
form is still in the initial stage, and an 
enormous disproportion of its work has 
been assigned to endowments of philan- 
thropic institutions and to public speaking 
and literature. The men who are going 
to make the twentieth century glorious by 
solving the most difficult problem of all 
the ages are not to be found in pulpits nor 
in universities. The divinest and most 
hopeful work of the Gospel has been as- 
signed to men who are trained by exper- 
ience and not by schools, who are shrewd 
enough to dodge the thieves, quick enough 
to catch them, or else stalwart enough to 
knock them down; they are working men 
themselves, and by virtue of their environ- 
ments and habitudes they know better 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. II. 79 

than walking delegates what wage-earners 
need, and sooner or later we all trust them 
and follow their lead. 

Who are our good Samaritans? They 
are our Christian business men who are 
content with moderate profits and are seek- 
ing first the kingdom of heaven in their 
business itself. Luther used to come upon 
portions of Scripture that made him ex- 
claim: ''Aha, this is my Psalm; Galatians 
is my epistle!" The Good Samaritan is 
your parable, O Christian business men! 
Does not the personal pronoun quiver in 
the conscience of every man of you: go 
and do thou likewise! Make a good use 
of your wealth is the only appeal men will 
hear who are on the other side. Make a 
good use of yourselves is the appeal of 
your gospel. 

And it never calls you away from your 
work to make a business of philanthropy. 
The question is not how much time you 
can take from your business for charity, 
but how to keep all uncharitableness out 
of your business, and how to make it all 
philanthropy through and through. The 
good Samaritan was not on an errand to 
the slums that day — he was on a business 
trip. You will find all the men you can 
take care of in the midst of your business. 
This is not your parable if you have to 



80 THE LABOUR QUESTION. II. 

drop work to hunt after them. Conduct 
your business so that it will take care of 
them and yield you fair profits also. Make 
bargains which will be just as good for the 
buyer as for the seller. Be a good neigh- 
bour to the men you employ or to the men 
who employs you, while the work is going 
on. No makeshifts of philanthropy can 
bring you together if your interests are 
hostile at the start. How to demolish, 
root and branch, all business which can 
make gains only by the losses of others, how 
to take care of one another all through the 
competitions and complications of modern 
business on consolidated capital, how to 
do business on Christian principle, and 
how to make Christian principle rule the 
business of the world; this is the exact 
and the only question of our parable. 

Don't give up because you can't get rid 
of pernicious systems. The Samaritan did 
not chase after the Priest and Levite to 
curse their temple; nor raise a hue and cry, 
nor summon a cohort to catch the thieves, 
nor start for Rome to insist on the sup- 
pression of brigandage. His man was 
half dead, and would be quite dead long 
before any such ponderous machinery 
could be started. Profit-sharing, concilia- 
tion by arbitration, perpendicular combi- 
nations of labour and capital in the same 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. II. 8l 

establishments keeping employers and men 
good neighbours and mutual helpers, in- 
stead of horizontal combinations of capi- 
talists on one side and workmen on the 
other, always in hostile array; work in 
combinations of small capital as well as 
supplies provided by cooperative stores; 
a natural system of taxation which will 
shift the heaviest burdens from those who 
receive the least to those who receive the 
most from the civil government. Think 
on all of these things, and approve the more 
excellent. But constitutions must be 
amended before the most important of 
them can be set in force. Listen to the 
reformers, but stop your ears when any- 
body tells you that no good can be done 
until a revolution reverses everything in 
the political and financial world. That 
was the temptation of Christ at the be- 
ginning of His ministry. His own people 
were crushed by a military despotism. 
Roman slavery was making free labour 
odious, and holding half the population 
of the capital in the cruellest bondage. 
Every province was ripe for revolt. Vener- 
able prophecies, well known East and West, 
looked for the deliverer to come from this 
peculiar people. It was no preposterous 
thing to offer supreme power for the right- 
ing of these wrongs at a stroke to a young 
enthusiastic prophet. The wrestling 



8a THE LABOUR QUESTION. II. 

against the temptation cost Jesus the 
anguish of forty days which was a foretaste 
of Gethsemane, but He refused to be a 
judge and a divider over men. His king- 
dom was not of this world. The devil left 
Him for a season, but came back when the 
people were going to take Jesus and make 
Him a king by force; and again, when 
Constantine did make Christianity the re- 
ligion of the Roman empire. The devil 
is coming back now, when excellent Chris- 
tian socialists are proclaiming a gospel of 
the regeneration of society as a whole, in 
advance of soul-saving labour for indi- 
viduals. This Satan, savouring not of the 
things of God but of the things that be of 
men, must get behind our good Samaritans. 
The first thing to do for institutions is to 
get close to men who are down and to help 
them up one by one; and there is nobody 
in the wide world who can always do the 
right thing in the nick of time except a 
business man who is familiar with all the 
details of our complicated industries, and 
has the common-sense to make the least 
of their evils and the conscience to control 
them for righteousness. 

No man ever protested more strenuously 
against monopolies than Charles Kingsley, 
and yet he declares that, without the 
change of a single law or feature of the in- 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. II. 83 

dustrial system, if every person in Great 
Britain who professed and called himself a 
Christian should live literally according to 
the precepts and example of Christ, there 
would not be a man left at the end of twen- 
ty-four hours who could keep the upper 
hand for unrighteousness. Can we live 
literally according to the example and 
precepts of Christ? We think of His sin- 
less life and of His miracles of benevolence. 
But He never commanded us to do these 
things in His name. We are to follow His 
footsteps, but He left no footsteps on the 
sea. There is one section of His life, 
longer by many years than His public 
ministry, which business men can follow 
literally. Jesus was a carpenter and build- 
er from His youth to His thirtieth year. 
Why do we know so little of the largest 
portion of His life on earth? Not because 
it was less a redeeming life than the three 
or four years at the end, but because there 
was nothing miraculous in it. He was do- 
ing what everybody can always do. He 
was wearing a path and working out a rule 
for the righteous conduct of business for 
ever. Don't say that His rule will work at 
home and in church, but is too good for 
your business. It will not work wicked- 
ness, and it will not work at all unless you 
work it, but it was meant for precisely such 
business as the carpenter and builder in 



84 THE LABOUR QUESTION. II. 

Nazareth used to carry on. He brings it 
in where He is teaching His disciples their 
first steps. By-and-by He is going to 
make heroes of a few of them, who will love 
their neighbours a great deal more than 
they love themselves, and will lay down 
their lives for their enemies. You could 
also be trained for martyrdom if that were 
necessary. But your immediate work is 
not heroic; become a good neighbour and 
love your neighbour as yourself. 

After all, the golden rule is nothing but 
a tolerable and useful selfishness. Every 
approach to communism makes selfishness 
the more intolerable by attempting to 
ignore it. Utopian schemes are always 
shattered on this rock. Business cannot 
be done without some study of self-interest. 
This is one of the forces of human nature 
which can never be dispensed with. Christ 
takes it into His rule for doing business. 
Love and reverence yourself — the only be- 
ing in the universe for whom you are 
entirely responsible. Do not fear nor de- 
spise your appetites and passions ; they are 
the dark things within you, but the dark- 
ness is not necessarily evil. Only keep 
them from overshadowing conscience; for 
if the light that is in thee be darkness, then 
what an awful thing must the darkness 
be! If conscience is groping blindly, then 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. II. 85 

the involuntary instincts, dark, but also 
useful, become the blackness of darkness. 
Keep these necessary and dangerous forces 
of your nature under the mastership of the 
will. Make a duty, not a passion, of your 
study of self-interest. Make the most and 
the best of your whole self, and then put 
your best self in the place of your neighbour. 
What would he like to have you do for him ? 
That is not the question. What would 
you like to have him do for you ? That is 
not the question. You are yourself — go- 
ing up from Jericho to Jerusalem. He is 
himself going down from Jerusalem to 
Jericho. Put yourself as you are now, after 
a good turn in your character and fortunes, 
into the place of the other man and do him 
exactly the good turn you would have him 
do you. What would you do if you were 
just as intelligent and just as scrupulous 
as you are now, but had been frozen out of 
business and were supporting your family 
in a tenement house on a dollar and a half 
a day? What would you do if you were 
in character exactly what you are, and yet 
had an income of five hundred thousand? 
Put your best self in the place of everybody 
you touch, and keep in touch with Christ. 
What preposterous talk we hear about 
the golden rule as an ideal which will not 
work in business! It never was meant to 
work in anything else, and nothing else will 



86 THE LABOUR QUESTION. II. 

work in business. Retaliations and strikes 
and boycotts don't pretend to work. A 
fight always stops work. This is not a 
military order, but the rule for non-com- 
batants who stay at home and send on the 
supplies, and cheer the heroes and martyrs 
and missionaries who are at the front 
fighting the good fight. Shame on the 
man who names the name of Christ, and 
gives out that he cannot make such an 
easy rule as this do the unheroic but blessed 
work assigned to it. It is righteousness 
reduced to its lowest terms. It is the mar- 
shalling of self-interest for the simplest 
services of God. It is the only way to do 
business with a splendid economy of all 
the forces of human nature. 

Take the eighth commandment and the 
golden rule literally. Take them as cate- 
gorical imperatives into all details of 
business, and the moment they clog the 
machinery take the crash as a danger- 
signal. Stop short; an enterprise which 
cannot be carried on with literal obedience 
to the law of God and the Gospel of Christ 
is not business. 

The golden rule was not intended for 
heroic _ work, but its displacement from 
authority in commercial affairs is an evil 
which may require a heroic remedy. 
Young men of scholarly training and of 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. II. 87 

Christian principles may yield uncon- 
sciously to the fascination of motives which 
will murder conscience. They are in dan- 
ger when they see without a shudder 
enormous fortunes made by legal protec- 
tion of fraud. And when they discover 
in themselves symptoms of mania for sud- 
den wealth, they must renounce this bad 
ambition utterly, or else count the cost at 
the integrity of their souls. They must 
give up business if its profits are turning 
their heads. They are honest enough now 
to become rich, or even to become poli- 
ticians, and still be safe and useful. They 
will not be safe a month longer with this 
delirium mounting to their brains. They 
must cut off the right hand and pluck out 
the right eye. 

In fact, however, the heroic remedy is 
almost never needed. There is a good 
ambition which will overcome the bad. 
Money-making ought not to be given up 
by young men who delight in it, unless lust 
for gain is becoming an infatuation. En- 
thusiasm for your business and for the 
blessings it will confer ought to be one of 
the commanding forces of the Gospel. 
There are thorough-going Christian men 
enough in every legitimate business in the 
world to brand with shame all speculations 
which by the nature of things can only gain 
by the loss of rivals. Is it true that the 



88 THE LABOUR QUESTION.- — II. 

Stock Exchange is a dangerous place for 
young men as sensitive in conscience as 
their mothers and sisters? Then it is an 
infamous truth. Make it an infamous lie 
in less than a generation. Widows of 
clergymen in the Church of England used 
to send their sons to Samuel Morley's estab- 
lishment in Wood-street entreating him 
to train them to his own sense of honour 
in trade. There was a business firm in 
Leipsic to which lecturers on ethics in all 
the universities used to refer, assuring their 
scholars that it could teach them more 
than their whole curriculum. A dealer 
in grain once failed in Buffalo. There was 
not a lawyer in the city who would under- 
take to prosecute him. His creditors were 
obliged to accept his own terms. He toiled 
for them the rest of his life, paid one hun- 
dred cents on the dollar, left his family 
with small investments, and a name worth 
more than millions. 

Business men are largely responsible for 
the quality of modern Christianity. It no 
longer means what the preachers preach, 
nor even what the Bible reads in the 
original. It means exactly what prosper- 
ous business men in our churches are doing. 
They have been content too long to let 
honesty as the best policy pass for Chris- 
tian virtue. They can make the whole 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. II. 89 

Gospel ring as true in trade as in the Bible. 
The rest of us don't know how, and we are 
not responsible for our ignorance; but if 
they don't know how, they are responsible 
for their ignorance. There must be a 
Gospel way of doing things so useful, so 
needful, and so manifestly committed to 
them by the providence of God. They are 
called to the apostolic w^ork of making 
business itself the most genuine and the 
most aggressive agency of modern Chris- 
tianity. 

A few of them have created the ideals 
which inspire our appeals to them all. 
We have seen these men of God run their 
mills at a loss all winter to keep their men 
from starving, investigate complaints and 
grant twdce as much as was asked if justice 
demanded that increase, refuse to dis- 
charge non-union men at the peril of a 
strike in flush times, make colossal sacrifi- 
ces for principle, and live with the one 
transcendent ambition to the greater works 
which Christ has left for this age in the 
transcendent promise of His Gospel. Our 
appeal is for a Christian combination of all 
men and women of influence in the country 
under the lead of business men, to work out 
the labour problem as thoroughly as eman- 
cipation solved a simpler but not less 
difficult problem. Aspirations for Chris- 
tian unitv have thus far scarcelv risen 



90 THE LABOUR QUESTION. II. 

above the hope of huddling us together 
under a common creed and a common 
church polity. Here is a heavenly king- 
dom of work which will unite churches and 
reform clubs in a grand Christian federation. 

And the actual leaders of such a move- 
ment must be business men. They must 
cancel from our programme schemes which 
are Utopian, lay out work year by year 
which public opinion will sustain, and 
educate the people by gradual improve- 
ments in operation. We ought to lay 
hands on a few of the great men now 
engaged in commerce and prophesy unto 
them in the name of the Lord, saying: 
You are rich enough. You have trained 
younger men to take your place. Leave 
your plough and sacrifice your oxen on the 
altar. Never make another dollar. Give 
away something better than your money. 
Give yourself, your mind, your sagacity, 
your experience, and above all the talents 
which have sustained your enthusiasm 
in doing good by means of your own busi- 
ness, and show us how to organize the 
business of the whole country for doing good 
Capitalise your fortune, your time, your 
ambition, and your best inspirations, for 
this one grand enterprise. Command the 
masters of statistics, the scholars in eco- 
nomics and ethics, and all the specialists 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. II. 91 

in reform, and give their figures and facts 
and theories a practical turn. Have faith 
in God that mountains can be moved, and 
by patient undermining, and then by ex- 
plosions, if need be, move them out of the 
way of righteousness and peace. You are 
our pre-destined leaders in three enter- 
prises of a working Christian unity: in 
making business an inspired Christian call- 
ing, in doing business on Christian prin- 
ciples, and in using business for the agres- 
sive work of the Gospel. 

A man who had risen from the ranks of 
wage-earner began, about thirteen years 
ago, to teach the working men in his 
factory how to make self-interest reach to 
the point of honour. He set the limit to 
his own profits at six per cent, on the capi- 
tal invested. He reserved ten per cent, 
of the profits to meet losses in bad years, 
and five per cent, more as a provident fund 
for the sick, and for widows and orphans 
of men dying in his service. All that was 
left he distributed at the rate of two dollars 
added to the men's wages for every one 
dollar added to the capital as surplus. 
Already capital has increased so that new 
factories have been erected, surrounded by 
cooperative stores, schools, lecture-halls, 
and library for the benefit of the commun- 
ity. Hundreds of the men are stock- 
holders in the company, and are purchas- 



92 THE LABOUR QUESTION. II. 

ing their own picturesque homes by instal- 
ments. They all understand that they are 
cheating not only their associates but them- 
selves if they fail to do their best, and they 
share the enthusiasm of their devoted 
leader. 

In 1892 a few neighbouring farmers in 
Ireland were persuaded to build and equip 
a creamery. Others followed in rapid 
succession. In three years the losses from 
bad debts and litigation were made good, 
and profits were increasing. Societies be- 
came so numerous that agencies for the 
sale of their products were established in 
every large town in England. They ex- 
tended their work to all branches of farm- 
ing, and in 1896 they had eight thousand 
seven hundred and fifty shareholders, and 
in one year they put goods on the market 
worth nearly a million and a half dollars. 
The land of evictions and famines which 
was the most backward in Europe ten 
years ago is farthest advanced to-day to- 
wards the righteous use of the soil for the 
benefit of its cultivators. And one of the 
youngest members of the English Parlia- 
ment has been the indefatigable leader in 
the work of making self-help for the sake 
of helping each other a kingdom of heaven 
on Irish soil. 

Many similar experiments have failed, 
and have been abandoned. The Irish ex- 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. II. 93 

periment failed for two years, and was not 
abandoned. No man is fit to be a leader 
who is daunted by failure. We are a peo- 
ple of inventive genius, and of prodigious 
energy, and ours is a continent of boundless 
resources. This is the spot, and the hour 
has struck for a permanent solution of the 
labour problem. We only lack the leaders. 
We are waiting in distress and in suspense 
for missionary work by business apostles. 

The value of personal services in these 
directions by experienced business men is 
beyond all possible computation. Sup- 
pose that a new Peter the Hermit should 
arise, take the signal-call to disarm which 
has just been sounded for his text, and 
preach a crusade for peaceful industry to 
celebrate the new century! Suppose all 
the churches and clubs and newspapers in 
our land should take up the watchword 
with enthusiasm! Suppose it should as- 
sume this simple form, all of us who had 
an income of more than twenty-five hun- 
dred dollars agree to give away all our 
savings during the year 1901! Not a 
dollar is to be taken from invested capital ; 
annual expenses are not to be diminished; 
taxes and all benevolent contributions are 
to be deducted from the income as usual. 
Then whatever is left shall be given solid 
for the Jubilee. We agree not to grow 



Q4 THE LABOUR QUESTION. II. 

any richer for twelve months, and to make 
that year blaze among the centuries by one 
magnificent endowment of philanthropy. 
No man can dispute what the amount 
would be. In 1880 it would have been one 
thousand millions; two thousand millions 
would be a moderate estimate of the great 
thanksgiving offering of 1910. Now sup- 
pose it could be handled without corrup- 
tion and be devoted to the building and 
endowment of industrial schools fairly 
distributed all over the country and con- 
ducted for the geatest possible benefit. 
This vast benevolence would not count a 
feather's weight compared with the per- 
sonal services of all the business men who 
profess to be Christians, if they would do 
all their business in exact conformity to 
this parable. 

Neither money nor prophecy can do the 
work of the good Samaritan. There is not 
a preacher nor a scholar in the world who 
can give such speed to the coming of the 
kingdom of heaven as any business man 
who will do all his work by the golden rule, 
make his ledgers liturgies, and his cash 
books collects for every day, stamp his 
money with the image of God while he is 
earning it, and so make it current in the 
kingdom of heaven. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM! 
THE difficulty; THE TARES. 1. 

Cruelty has a human heart, 

And jealousy a human face; 
Terror the human form divine, 

And secrecy the human dress. 
The human dress is forged iron, 

The human form a fiery forge, 
The human face a furnace sealed, 

The human heart its hungry gorge. 

William Blake. 

Why has this parable received and retained 
its ominous title? It might well be called 
the parable of planting men. It takes 
up the parable of sowing the truth where 
its abundant harvest has gathered the 
children of the kingdom, and goes on to 
tell us what becomes of them. Are they 
fully ripe for the enjoyment of heaven, 
and taken home to be for ever with the 
Lord? They are planted again as good 
seed for another harvest. Their heaven is 
not yet a heavenly rest. The men who 
were called into the house to listen to 
Christ's interpretation of this great mis- 
sionary parable were not removed from 

95 



96 optimism; the difficulty. 

the scene of His sufferings and resurrection 
until the harvest of thousands was gathered 
in. Then they were sown again, broadcast, 
all over the world, every man where his 
growth would be most productive. 

There was not a scholar among them yet. 
The man of classic and rabbinical learning 
would be ready and fullgrcwn in the knowl- 
edge of Christ by the time he would be 
needed in the synagogues of the dispersion, 
among the Stoics and Epicureans of Athens 
and in the Imperial capital. He was so 
eager to open new plantations in Spain 
that he had to be chained to one after 
another of the Praetorian guards, who could 
do his missionary work more effectually 
and far more widely. 

This parable is the unrolled chart of 
Christian history. Seed-time is known 
only to the Divine sower, and He always 
has the right seed ready for every soil. 
Why was the settlement of this continent 
delayed for more than a century? The 
men were not born who could be the chil- 
dren of such a kingdom as God intended to 
plant in the new world. They were ready 
at last, and were blown over the winter's 
sea to a coast too barren to produce any 
other luxury than men and women of 
godly sincerity and dauntless resolution. 
Why was not slavery gradually abolished 
as Washington and Jefferson advised and 



THE TARES. 1. 97 

expected? A harvest of heroic men must 
first be planted and gathered. One of them 
who was endowed by nature with brilliant 
gifts received also one talent in his child- 
hood; he heard Lyman Beecher preach a 
sermon which kept ringing the changes on 
the truth — you belong to God. He went 
home and offered this prayer: I belong to 
Thee, O God; take what is Thine own and 
vouchsafe that whenever anything be 
wrong it may have no power to tempt me, 
and whenever anything be right it may 
take no courage to do it. Long afterwards 
the answer came. He was sitting in his 
office, as oblivious to his heavenly calling 
as Saul of Tarsus on his journey to Damas- 
cus, when he saw a gentleman led by a rope 
in a mob who could scarcely be restrained 
from murdering him. In Faneuil Hall he 
heard the Attorney General of the Com- 
monwealth defend the murderers of Love- 
joy. The Spirit of the Lord came upon 
him, he sprang to his feet, and from that 
hour for more than thirty years, until 
slavery was abolished and every trace of 
its venom was removed from the constitu- 
tion, he was the inflamed conscience and 
the persuasive power of the greatest re- 
form in American history. 

Wendell Philips would have ruined the 
cause he loved and won if he had been 
planted anywhere else than on the plat- 



98 optimism; the difficulty. 

form, where his matchless eloquence si- 
lenced and carried by storm tumultuous 
multitudes. A very different man was 
needed in a more conspicuous position. 
Convinced that slavery was wrong and 
must not be extended, that secession, 
whether proposed by Abolitionists or 
threatened by slaveholding States, would 
be a still greater crime, he was planted 
where he could wait for public opinion to 
sustain him in proclaiming and enforcing 
emancipation to save and not to destroy 
the Union. 

The Divine Husbandman makes no mis- 
takes in planting His men. Has He 
planted you in a hard place? Is it worse 
than the pandemonium of all iniquity in 
Pagan Rome? The flowers we now be- 
hold growing out of the ruined palace of 
the Caesars are a faint emblem of the vir- 
tues of Christian slaves who were saints in 
Nero's household. Never say you cannot 
be a faithful Christian on the stock-board. 
You cannot be entirely obedient to your 
heavenly calling anywhere else. That is 
the strategic position in the next battle 
for righteousness in England and in 
America. You belong to God, who has 
given you the talent to make Christian 
principle the rule of business, and has 
commanded you to stand there in His 



THE TARES. — I. 99 

name. Reverence yourself as the good 
seed of His kingdom. Then trickery will 
be no temptation and fair dealing will 
require no courage. In a free land where 
public schools are open, where newspapers 
are circulating and where church bells are 
ringing, public opinion is not going to 
tolerate any flagrant sin very long. The 
people can be trusted to enforce righteous- 
ness as soon as they know how. You are 
making their ignorance more dense by 
every compromise with fraud. You are 
opening their eyes every time you take 
your stand, alone if need be, for justice. 
That is what a Christian is for. And we 
are all planted where our several scruples 
are specially needed. 

But the seed must fall into the ground 
and die before its hidden germ can multiply 
a hundredfold. Paul counted all things 
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge 
of Christ. Savonarola forsook his aristo- 
cratic home to become a teacher of novices, 
and persisted in his denunciations of cor- 
ruption when he knew that his life must be 
the forfeit. Wendell Phillips was ostra- 
cised and resigned a profession which was 
promising speedy wealth and power, and 
even after the success of his agitation had 
made him famous, refused to be governor 
or senator in order to be untrammelled 



ioo optimism; the difficulty. 

in his services for the temperance and the 
labour reforms. No man can come after 
Christ who refuses to take up his cross. 
You must lose your life to save it. The 
eternal vitality for righteousness within 
you must be a resurrection from the grave 
where you are buried with Christ. The 
teacher must be dead to his own emolu- 
ments and alive to the truth; the states- 
man must be dead to personal ambition 
and alive to the service of his country; 
the business man must be dead to covet- 
ousness and alive to integrity in trade. 
Then they are children of the kingdom. 
No other seed will redeem the purchased 
field from waste. The world will not read 
the Bible, but they will always read the 
men who live up to it. Into a limitless 
fallowfield of men desperately unscrupulous 
you fall with a conscience purged from 
dead works to serve the living God; they 
feel the throbbing of Christ's spirit in you 
and spring up to a ransomed and rein- 
vigorated life. 

But, bright as this outlook is, we must 
turn to the dark feature of the parable to 
discover the true basis for Christian op- 
timism. Christ's promise that the plant- 
ing of good men shall never be frustrated 
by the planting of the wicked among them 
is the most far-reaching prediction of the 



THE TARES. 1. IOI 

Gospel. The tares, not the wheat, have 
made Christian history and have headed 
its chapters with ominous titles. 

The best life of men and of nations is 
uneventful. This story is only just begun, 
when a wicked deed diverts its peaceful 
current and absorbs our interest in the 
dreadful calamity. 

But it does not destroy the ideal. The 
kingdom of heaven is not like sowing tares, 
but always like sowing good seed. The 
change observed in a former parable is also 
made in this, only now the verb has the 
historic tense: the kingdom of heaven 
became like the two sowings in its progress. 
This is a startling feature of every period 
of Christian history, and it has adhered to 
the very title of its great prophetic parable. 

Who are the tares? Our Lord's inter- 
pretation is perfectly clear; and yet this 
parable has been involved in one of the 
most interminable controversies of Chris- 
tian literature: — 

What is the church of God? The body 
of Christ, holy and without blemish, with 
many members, who are all sanctified in 
Christ Jesus, effectually called and made 
partakers of the Divine nature. On these 
scriptures strict Puritans of all ages have 
taken their stand, and have protested that 
the church is a communion of saints, and 
consists of all those, and of those only, who 



102 optimism; the difficulty, 

are truly regenerate in heart. The Lord 
knoweth them that are His, and they know 
one another, not by their uniform, but by 
the recognition of mutual love, which shall 
become perfect when they are arrayed in 
the white robes, and when God shall spread 
His tabernacle over them, and wipe away 
the blinding tears from their eyes. 

A very different definition of the Church 
has been given from early times. The ideal 
exists only in heaven. In this world 
neither the family, nor the church, nor the 
civil government can be patterned after 
the city of God. The Church is a working 
organization of fallible men. It must al- 
ways be like the net which gathers the bad 
with the good. It is like the church in 
Corinth — quarrelling, boastful, and some- 
times intemperate in its love-feasts; it is 
like the churches in Galatia, falling from 
grace to slavish ordinances; and like the 
church in Colossae, bewildered by fanati- 
cisms; in short, it is like a field, growing 
tares and wheat, which cannot be separated 
until the harvest. Taking their stand on 
these descriptions, High Churchmen have 
maintained that the Church consists of all 
who have been baptized with water into 
the name of the Holy Trinity, and that its 
unregenerate members must be converted 
after baptism and be trained as beloved 
children of one holy family in Christ Jesus. 



THE TARES. 1. 103 

After all, this is a controversy of purism, 
not of puritanism, and might be passed 
without mention if this parable had not 
been dragged into it. Such an interpre- 
tation is expressly excluded by one startling 
fact : the tares must be left to grow as they 
are until the harvest! Would any church, 
Catholic or Protestant, Ritualistic or Puri- 
tan, dare to leave its unconverted members 
as they are until the judgment? Are they 
honest inquirers, seeking to know what 
they must do to be saved, and only needing 
the nurture and admonition of the Church 
to become in heart and life saints of God? 
Then they are not the tares. Are they 
wandering children, sometimes overcome 
by flagrant sins and needing rebukes and 
discipline to lead them to repentance? 
Then they are not the tares. Are they 
precisely what they were before their bap- 
tism, unbelieving and impenitent men, 
some devout and easily moved to contri- 
tion, others hardened in wickedness, but 
all equally outside of the true Church of 
Christ? Then they are not the tares. 
What are they? They are the world. 
Here is the exact word to describe them in 
the parable itself. It is our grief and 
shame that we cannot get access to the 
world. Here is a little world that has got 
access to us. We also were the world once. 
What if the Church had left us to grow as 



104 optimism; the difficulty. 

we were until the harvest ! We must never 
let any man alone if we can reach him, 
least of all the men who come to receive 
our word and sacraments. The Puritans 
tried in vain to read men's hearts and to 
determine by discipline w r ho were God's 
elect. Sacraments are invoked in vain to 
make a wicked man a member of Christ's 
living body. But this sweet and awful 
parable, at least, must be left out of our 
controversies. These adherents, making 
our local church organizations to the end 
of time mixed multitudes, are not the 
devil's tares, but the Christian world 
planted for a glorious harvest. 

Then who are the tares, the children of 
the wicked one? The only deleterious 
species belonging to the gramineous plants 
is the lolium temulentum, the lolium infelix, 
the bearded darnel still found in the Orient. 
It is a kind of degenerate wheat, which 
cannot be distinguished from the whole- 
some grain while it is growing. This falls 
in so well with the story that naturalists 
have identified the tares with these dar- 
nels. Why may they not be removed 
while they are growing? Not because 
their roots are so united to the wheat that 
both would come up together. That 
danger would forbid weeding gardens at all, 
and may be avoided with care. Only be- 



THE TARES. — I. 105 

cause the most painstaking husbandman 
cannot yet tell tares from wheat. Sprout, 
and stalk, and blossoms look exactly like 
wheat. 

This brings out more clearly the distinc- 
tion between the children of the wicked 
one, and the worldly element in the Church. 
It is precisely while the Church and the 
world are growing together that they can 
be distinguished. We cannot read the 
heart, but conduct is always legible, and 
if a man is overtaken in a fault we must 
restore such an one in the spirit of meek- 
ness. They who are spiritual must count 
the worldly to be brethren, and deal with 
their trespasses delicately, and be agreed 
as touching this thing they ask that they 
may save them within the Church. And 
even if they must be cast out, and become 
as the heathen and the publican, then 
their brethren must begin over again, and 
become, like their master, ardent friends 
of the publicans and sinners. Church 
discipline, from its first step of loving ex- 
postulation between man and man to the 
last extremity, must be conducted while 
the spiritual are growing with the worldly; 
it does not root up, but cultivates whole- 
some growths of the spirit, and it is the only 
possible salvation for the worldly. 

But among the children of the kingdom 
so closely united with this worldly yet hope- 



106 optimism; the difficulty. 

ful element, the enemy has planted the 
children of the wicked, and no mortal man 
can discover them ! The parable expressly 
forbids all attempts to detect and exclude 
them. Wilt Thou that we go and gather 
them out? That has been the fatal mis- 
take of the Church in all ages. Never was 
more conscientious work done than Cath- 
olic persecution of Waldensians, Calvin's 
condemnation of Servetus, and Puritan 
execution of Quakers. Wheat always 
burns with tares when the zeal of men 
intrudes upon the awful prerogative of God. 

Our question must be changed. What 
are the tares? We are forbidden to ask 
who they are, but the duty becomes all the 
more imperative to recognize the evil 
principle which is described in this parable 
and in the prophetic writings of the Apos- 
tles. There is a leaven of malice and 
wickedness in the Church; it is a mystery 
of iniquity already at work; in those who 
believe a lie, and who will not receive the 
love of truth, there is a fermentation of 
powers and signs and lying wonders, with 
all deceivableness of unrighteousness; the 
danger becomes so appalling that it is 
ascribed to one human Antichrist, but this 
error is corrected by the assurance that 
there are many Antichrists; at last the 
Apocalypse, still without identifying them 



THE TARES. 1. 107 

with individuals who have ever appeared 
in history, fully describes successive judg- 
ments upon the wicked one and his children 
until the final separation. 

For tares may grow with wheat, and do 
no greater harm than to cumber the ground, 
But the ripe grains of the two must never 
be harvested together. The tares produce 
a grain which mixed with wheat makes 
bread stimulating, but never nourishing, 
and if the bad proportion be excessive the 
whole loaf will be intoxicating and poison- 
ous. The enemy has no expectation that 
men will gather and eat unmixed tares. 
He sows with sparing hand over the best 
fields of wheat, so as to mingle just enough 
and not too much of the poisonous stuff 
to spoil all their bread and to throw them 
into fatal excitement while they think they 
are taking wholesome nourishment. 

The tares are all things that offend. The 
embezzlements which are sometimes traced 
to church-members cause the little ones to 
tremble, not to stumble. The newspapers 
are eager to expose the inconsistencies of 
Christians. It would be a calamity if this 
criticism were less severe. Trembling pre- 
vents stumbling. The things that actually 
offend are the iniquities which are so hid- 
den under the disguise of piety that neither 
the Church nor the world suspect their 
presence. If they were not cast out by the 



108 optimism; the difficulty. 

judgment of God they would become 
an ingredient of the entire product of 
Christianity. Thus this evil is a great deal 
worse than worldliness in the Church ; it is 
in the Church and in the whole kingdom 
of God. It is the worst thing in the world; 
it makes religion itself immoral, 

Here is the difficulty in the problem of 
Christian optimism. It surpasses immeas- 
urably the difficulty in the problem of evil. 
Serious as the latter is to philosophy, Chris- 
tian faith finds relief in the truth of re- 
demption. But the immediate difficulty 
before the Christian optimist is the indis- 
tinguishable mixture of fathomless wicked- 
ness with all remedial agencies in the very 
kingdom of redemption. And when we 
reflect that this hidden iniquity has al- 
ways leavened Christianity, that it cannot 
be detected by men, and that Christ pro- 
hibits all attempts to trace it to individuals, 
then we must look for the solution of the 
difficulty to this one promise of the parable 
that the tares shall be separated from the 
wheat at the end of the world. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM! 
THE SOLUTION! THE TARES. II. 



The day of the Lord as the prophet saw it, the coming 
of the Son of Man, is the revelation of light and a judgment 
of righteousness. It is not an event, it is a crisis. It is not 
retired to a remote past. It is not adjourned to a more re- 
mote future. It is not merely an event in the sequence of 
affairs, it is a judgment with the discrimination of good and 
evil and the issue of righteousness. It is not of one day 
or one age alone; it is here and now. This judgment in the 
distinction and manifestation of righteousness and wicked- 
ness, is real and ethical and eternal. — Mulford. 

Christian optimism rests absolutely upon 
Christ's promise to separate hidden in- 
iquity from righteousness at the end of the 
world. But what basis for optimism 
would this promise afford, in our present 
condition, if the end of the world means 
the judgment after death? This is cer- 
tainly the impression which the English 
Bible gives: the field is the world — the 
harvest is the end of the world. No reader 
of either version, the old or the revised, 
without marginal notes, would suspect 

109 



no optimism; the solution. 

that an entirely different word is used in 
the latter clause. It means a period, and 
no farther back than in the previous par- 
able it meant — the cares of — this life- 
time. It always requires the preposition 
unto or a compound, the age of the 
ages, to make it mean eternity. Stand- 
ing alone it describes a period which can 
only be defined by the context. In other 
scriptures there may be some difficulty in 
deciding how long the ' period may last. 
But the parable of the tares assigns a 
definite time: until they are ripe for the 
harvest. The toleration of wickedness 
mixed with righteousness so perniciously 
that they seem to mean one thing cannot 
last very long. The winding-up, the settle- 
ment, or the consummation of the age, 
must mean here the termination of a brief 
period of devilish deceptions. The Lord 
knoweth when His own can be no longer 
safely left in an indistinguishable mass 
with the children of the wicked one. And 
the harvest of the tares must mean the 
swift and frequent ripening of hidden in- 
iquity for the burning of God's wrath 
against the ungodliness and unrighteous- 
ness of men who are smothering the truth 
in unrighteousness. The Son of Man shall 
send forth His angels to gather out of His 
kingdom all things that offend and the 
workers of iniquity. The angels may be 



THE TARES. II. Ill 

ministers of the churches, whose denuncia- 
tions of hidden iniquities become awful 
judgments of God. Invading hordes from 
the North were recognized as the scourge 
of God upon the corruptions of the Church 
of Rome. Revolutions have always fur- 
nished ministers of Divine retribution. 
And we know not what unseen guardians 
are looking up into the face of God and 
imploring Him to come to the rescue of 
His little ones. The signal is given at 
last. The man of sin, the son of perdition, 
who has been so long opposing him&elf 
and exalting himself and sitting in the 
temple of God and deceiving the very elect, 
is revealed and destroyed by the sword 
that proceedeth out of the mouth of the 
Lord. This is always a day of judgment 
and its separations of the children of the 
kingdom from the children of the wicked 
one are made by the searching truth of 
the Gospel. 

If this interpretation be true, it forbids 
both Christian pessimism and sentimental 
optimism. The former teaches that the 
world must grow worse and worse, that the 
Church has no call to reform the world, 
that the quality of Christianity must al- 
ways be adulterated, and that only the 
elect are to be gathered out to meet the 
Lord at His final coming in judgment. 



ii2 optimism; the solution. 

The latter teaches, or, at least, leaves it 
to be inferred, that the Church and the 
world are good enough as they are. This 
is the worse heresy of the two. But both 
are escaped by reading accurately this 
prediction of a series of merciful judgments 
frequently recurring, each one demolishing 
some hidden wickedness and beginning a 
new dispensation of righteousness. 

These judgments may be either spiritual 
siftings of the kingdom, or providential 
retributions upon the world, and both are 
often combined. It was a day of judg- 
ment when the Lord said to the twelve: 
One of you shall betray Me. They re- 
membered His word, Judge not lest ye be 
judged, and every one of them exclaimed, 
Lord, is it I? That was not too late for 
mercy to Judas Iscariot himself. Every 
repetition of that Supper is a merciful day 
of judgment. We also shall be guilty of 
the body and blood of the Lord if w^e eat 
and drink unworthily. At the last moment 
conscience may be inflamed, we may pro- 
nounce judgment on our own sins, be 
chastened of the Lord in discerning His 
broken body, and be saved from the con- 
demnation of the world. 

The preaching of the Gospel with un- 
compromising severity always brings a 
merciful day of judgment. In that awful 
day, when Peter's sermon hurled God's 



THE TARES. II. 113 

judgments upon his whole apostate nation, 
the murderers of Jesus were the most thank- 
ful of all who repented. The mystery of 
the Gospel surpasses all possible symbolism 
of nature, for tares may escape the burning 
and become the choicest wiieat. We must 
never point out others, or even suspect 
them to be among the tares, but we may 
sharpen our judgment of ourselves without 
despair, even to the extent of fearing that 
we are among the children of the wicked. 
There is no sin unto death, except harden- 
ing the heart against God's forgiving love. 
Our days of judgment are His imploring 
calls of love. Strive to enter in by the 
strait gate before it is too late. For many 
will seek to enter in, and shall not be able 
after that the Master of the house hath 
risen up and shut the door. It will be too 
late then to plead: "We used to eat and 
drink in Thy presence, and Thou hast 
taught in our streets." True; and it was 
that teaching and their eating and drinking 
at His table which were intended for merci- 
ful judgments, to save them from final 
condemnation. 

But the parable points to more signal 
days of judgment than these individual 
searchings of heart. Not less frequent are 
the providential judgments which sud- 
denly clear the atmosphere of the malaria 
of hypocrisy. It was a judgment and a 



ii4 optimism; the solution. 

complete obliteration of Jewish Phariseeism 
as an adulteration of God's truth when 
Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. 
Not a parable nor a disclosure of Christ's 
final coming fails to borrow a warning from 
that impending disaster. There are living 
men who can remember when ministers 
of the Gospel were publicly proclaiming 
that their only rule of duty was to preach 
what the brotherhood who employed them 
would allow and protect; that American 
slavery was a Bible institution; that there 
are occasions when the golden rule may be 
set aside, and that it actually justified 
slavery with sufficient safeguards for hu- 
mane treatment. Was there ever any 
danger that these apologies in the North 
would combine with the cruelties of the 
South and make the whole product of 
American Christianity an intoxicating mix- 
ture, and that this generation would go to 
their graves reeling with the drunkenness 
of these casuistries? Not the least danger. 
This deceivableness of unrighteousness re- 
ceived its judgment in a furnace of fire and 
in a wailing and gnashing of teeth which 
can never be forgotten. 

The nearness of impending judgments 
is not betokened so much by the excess 
of wickedness as by the apathy of those 
who have no hand in it, or by their un- 



THE TARES. II. 115 

conscious complicity with it. Our familiar 
saying, iniquity ripening for judgment, is 
scriptural if it be interpreted by this par- 
able. Iniquity is ripe, not because it is 
worse than ever before, and too bad to be 
suffered longer, but because it is mature 
in its deceivableness, and will become a 
fatal ingredient of religion if it remains. 
The awe of the thoughtless multitudes for 
pretentious sanctity was far more dangerous 
than the worst sins of the Pharisees. The 
Roman Church had survived greater crimes 
than those of the Popes deposed at Con- 
stance. But that Council professed to be 
reforming the Church in head and members. 
Its bigotry|and persecution could not be 
left to pass as the Reformation. The 
clergy of France could have prevented the 
bloody reaction of the Revolution, if they 
had united for reform in 1789. They 
would not follow their wisest bishops and 
priests, and suffered the church to be iden- 
tified with oppression. The judgments of 
God fall > when wickedness is ripe for a 
fatal harvest, which would poison all good- 
ness. 

And this is the danger-signal of our own 
times. On the whole, they are the best 
times of all history. We have now sur- 
veyed some of their worst evils, and, after 
all, these are nothing like so bad as the sins 
which Jesus rebuked in His parables. 



n6 optimism; the solution. 

Compared with the dark ages in the past 
the new century is almost glorious. And its 
first years are full of promise. But they 
are also ominous years. They betoken 
swiftly approaching judgments which must 
begin at the house of God. The churches 
are not sensitive to the evils of the times, 
and they are not giving the keynote to the 
song of progress. Science is in advance 
of religion in social reform. The labour 
reform stands now, as emancipation stood 
from 1850 to i860, in a position of acknowl- 
edged peril. And yet it is the economic 
and the political, rather than the ethical, 
question, which receives thorough discus- 
sion. Shortening the hours of a day's 
work, the exclusion of children of tender 
age from factories, official investigations 
of tenement houses in cities, and sanitary 
measures everywhere, are making con- 
stant advances. But how little the 
churches have to say from pulpit and press 
of the wickedness of conditions in business 
which make the withdrawal of children 
from school and of their mothers from home 
absolutely necessary in many families! 
The axe must be laid at the root of the evil. 
And if the judgment of God is not enforced 
upon conscience by His witnesses in the 
churches, it must fall in calamities. 

The dangers of war are alarming the 
armed nations of Europe. Destructive 



THE TARES. II. 117 

machinery is expected to make war im- 
possible. The monarch who maintains 
the most formidable army in the world 
is imploring the other great powers to join 
him in disarming. And this is the moment 
when the only great nation which has never 
had a standing army at all is proposing to 
create immense fleets and armies. Objec- 
tions are made because of the enormous 
expenditures, and of the danger of revers- 
ing our policy. But who is crying out 
against the essential wickedness of war? 
A few newspapers are taking this risk of 
unpopularity. But our churches have 
never borne adequate testimony against 
the worst survival of barbarism, and some 
of their ministers are apologizing for the 
evil as a necessity. War will soon become 
its own punishment, if its wickedness is 
not put away by repentance. 

But the most alarming complicity of the 
churches with the evils of our times is to 
be found in the attitude of some of them 
towards monopolies. Church members, 
who control them, seldom hear rebukes 
from the pulpit, and sometimes read apolo- 
gies for their conduct in denominational 
organs. Intemperate attacks are depre- 
cated when they are aimed at corporations 
in the hands of men of excellent character 
who honour their religious obligations and 



n8 optimism; the solution. 

contribute without stint to the noblest 
charities. There may be differences of 
opinion about trusts, and their influence 
is a proper subject of discussion. But one 
of them is controlled by men whose Chris- 
tian character ought not to be called in 
question. They are always present at 
prayer-meetings and take prominent parts 
in the service; they dress plainly, have 
pleasant words for all the brethren, and 
set examples wilich might well be followed 
in all the churches. Not a word is said in 
denial of the charge that the corporation 
has managed, by utter unscrupulousness 
and by the use of vast capital, to control 
every producer and every carrier, to say 
nothing of legislatures and courts. But 
the private virtues of the men are de- 
liberately balanced against the crushing 
weight of a corporation. Sometimes a 
disguised defence of trusts appears, as if 
they were a dispensation of Providence. 
In an address to an Endeavour society a 
missionary agent once set forth the urgent 
needs of his cause, announced that a large 
sum was offered on condition that the same 
amount should be made up from small 
gifts by a certain date, and then he went on 
to say that this munificent giver was once 
a poor man, but that he was raised up by a 
special providence for this crisis. And 
quite unconscious of any danger to the 



THE TARES. II. 119 

young men who were listening, he described 
the special providence in detail. It was 
one of the most underhand speculations 
ever reported. 

Another missionary society was rescued 
from debt by a single gift, on similar con- 
ditions, of six hundred thousand dollars. 
The papers published a report, which is in- 
credible, but was never denied, that the 
giver had an income that year of twenty 
millions. In the outburst, from pulpit, 
platform, and press, of devout thankful- 
ness for this providential intervention, it 
was left to a secular paper to quote the 
text, "I hate robbery for burnt offering." 

If it is coming to this, that the injustice 
by which enormous incomes are secured 
shall be ignored or even defended by the 
recipients of gifts and endowments for 
education and religion, then the abomina- 
tion of desolation is getting once more into 
the holy place, and the day of judgment 
must be at hand. The responsibility for 
vindicating the truth, and for destroying 
the adulteration of it, is never left alto- 
gether in the hands of men. Once, before 
every means of averting calamity was ex- 
hausted, slavery was proved to be unprofit- 
able by facts as conspicuous then as they 
are now, and all sorts of compromises were 
pledged. At last religion became a bad 
mixture, and the judgment fell. Similar 



120 optimism; the solution. 

compromises are now proposed. Scientific 
researches prove that the present process 
is running swiftly towards the ruin of all 
business enterprises. But the day of 
judgment will not come unless there be a 
falling away first of the true witnesses, and 
unless the man of sin contrive to sit in the 
temple and to be worshipped: The next 
revolution, if it must come, will put an end 
to compromises of religion with extortion, 
and will array all the forces of righteousness 
against public robbery. 

Christian optimists will always pray for 
deliverance from these judgments. Only 
one deliverance is possible: the judgment 
of the public conscience intercepting Divine 
retribution. There may be some standing 
among us who shall not see death until war 
and all oppression shall be discarded with 
shuddering horror. But if they ever be- 
hold this coming of the Son of Man they will 
first see repentance on the grandest scale, 
or else woes which will cast the darkest 
shadow that ever obscured the map of the 
world. 

Our best hopes for the future are fixed 
on the conjunction of these two safeguards 
of righteousness — the frequent judgments 
of God, and the enlightenment of con- 
science. To escape the former we only 
need a combination of all good men, who 



THE TARES. II. 121 

believe that the ruling hand belongs to 
Righteousness. They must stake every- 
thing on this issue, and prefer defeat to 
compromise. They must not lose heart, 
but 

. . . learn to scorn the praise of men 

And learn to lose with God; 
For Jesus won the world through shame, 

And beckons us His road. 
For right is right since God is God, 

And right the day must win; 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 

To falter would be sin. 

Pessimism is perilously near to Atheism. 
Our Heavenly Father loves His children 
too well to let them live long on poisoned 
bread. He loves best to give them enthu- 
siasm to cast out for themselves and for 
their own times the old leaven of malice 
and wickedness. But He never leaves to 
them the final responsibility for the quality 
of Christianity. His days of judgment 
come suddenly upon hidden iniquity when 
it is no longer tolerable. The worst times 
are not dangerous times to live in, if right- 
eousness is flashing keen out of their dark- 
ness. 

The interpretation of this parable, which 
puts off until death and the judgment of a 
future world the separation of wickedness 
from righteousness, would make apostates 



122 optimism; the solution. 

and deserters of the noblest soldiers of the 
Cross. They must endure as seeing Him 
who is invisible: — 

Truth for ever on the scaffold, 
Wrong for ever on the throne; 

Yet that scaffold sways the future; 
And behind the dim unknown 

Standeth God within the shadow, 
Keeping watch above His own. 

Keeping watch, and also swiftly coming. 
There is no need of heavenly surroundings 
to betoken His presence. His quickening 
spirit makes every devoted life radiant. 
If we look not on things seen, but on things 
not seen and eternal, we behold around the 
whole horizon the reddening dawn of the 
day when the righteous shall shine as the 
sun in the Kingdom of the Father. 

THE END. 



Anstadt & Cloudsley, Printers, York, Pa. 
Wm Z. Roy, Binder, Lancaster, Pa. 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



